Keywords in Australian Politics

This page intentionally left blank

Keywords in Australian Politics Ever been confused by the culture wars, flummoxed by factions or addled by the aspirational voter? Keywords in Australian Politics is much more than a dictionary. It outlines the main meanings of over one hundred words essential to understanding contemporary Australian politics. Political language is often used without explanation in the media, public debate, textbooks and lectures. Here at last is a book that provides Australians with the necessary information to use these terms with confidence in public discussion and debate, from the dinner party to the endof-semester essay. The keywords cover the Australian political institutions and processes, practices and behaviour, ideologies and movements, and cultural, social and economic forces that affect politics, Australia’s international relations and general frameworks for understanding Australian politics. This book defines each keyword, highlights links between different keywords, outlines the main debates concerning each keyword and indicates how they came to be part of Australian political language. Although the book is arranged alphabetically, systematic cross-referencing allows readers to follow their own trails of enquiry. This book is essential reading for everyone who wants to understand Australian political culture and ideas. Rodney Smith is a Senior Lecturer in the discipline of Government and International Relations at the Graduate School of Government at the University of Sydney. Ariadne Vromen is a Senior Lecturer in the discipline of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Ian Cook is a Senior Lecturer in the Politics Program at Murdoch University.

Keywords in Austr alian

Politics Rodney Smith Ariadne Vromen Ian Cook

   Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521672832 © Rodney Smith, Ariadne Vromen, Ian Cook 2006 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2006 - -

---- eBook (EBL) --- eBook (EBL)

- -

---- paperback --- paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents Acknowledgements

vi

Introduction: Why and How You Should Use This Book

vii

Keywords (and their Variants)

xvi

101 Keywords in Australian Politics

Index

1 213

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people for suggesting helpful ideas and sources for the book: David Brown, Katharine Gelber, Darryl Jarvis, Diarmuid Maguire and Michelle Savage. This book is dedicated to M. Don Fletcher, who may recognise in it some of the intellectual and stylistic skills he has directly and indirectly passed on to us.

vi

Introduction: Why and How You Should Use This Book

We wrote this book primarily for tertiary students and other people who want to orient themselves quickly to the keywords necessary for understanding contemporary Australian politics. In a series of short entries, the book outlines the main meanings of 101 of these words, highlights the links between them, outlines the main debates surrounding them, provides brief illustrations of their use, and suggests some further reading for those who want to find out more about them. Keywords such as bureaucracy, executive, identity politics, liberalism, managerialism, separation of powers, social capital and wedge politics are often mentioned without explanation in lectures, textbooks and other materials encountered by people studying Australian politics. These terms are important to the overall arguments being made by lecturers and writers; however, those lecturers and writers tend not to have the time or space to define or elaborate on them. Some students and readers will be at least passingly familiar with at least some of these terms. They can, however, quickly lose the thread of general arguments when they encounter specific terms with which they are unfamiliar. The same points apply to more general audiences exposed to news reporting and commentary on Australian politics. This book is designed as a tool for students and other people who find themselves wanting to gain basic knowledge about some keywords so that they can understand wider arguments about Australian politics. It is not a textbook. There are a number of very good textbooks on Australian politics, and new ones continue to emerge (see, for example, Cook 2004; Vromen and Gelber 2005). This book is designed to complement, rather than compete with, the general

vii

viii

Introduction

and specialised Australian politics texts in the market. Keywords in Australian Politics is not a dictionary of politics. There are far fewer entries in this book than in standard comprehensive Australian political dictionaries (see, for example, Henderson 2002; Jaensch 1996; Penguin Macquarie 1988). The terms identified as keywords here are more general than many of the words found in such dictionaries. The level of generality at which each keyword in this book is pitched and the length of each entry allow the book to do three things that are not possible in more comprehensive dictionaries of politics. The first is to explain more about each keyword than is possible in the context of a shorter dictionary-style entry. The second is to incorporate definition and discussion of some lower-order terms within the treatment of each keyword. Thus for example, the entries on conservatism, feminism, liberalism and socialism identify different strands of thought within these more general theories. The third is to indicate some positive and negative links between the different keywords in the book. Thus the book indicates the link between the way commentators view power in Australia and the way they view institutions like parliament, as well as tensions between ideas like bureaucracy and democracy, or accountability and executive. This book tries to provide readers with a better orientation to relationships between central political terms than do comprehensive dictionaries of politics. A book about Australian political keywords might be expected to cover different words from a book on Australian sporting keywords, or Australian economic keywords, or Australian religious keywords, although some words such as power might appear in all of them. The next two sections of this introduction explain the approach to identifying political keywords that we have taken in this book, first by discussing the idea of politics and then by explaining what we think differentiates keywords from other words. The final section of this introduction provides some guidance on the different ways of reading the rest of the book.

What is politics? Politics is a word that most people hear and use every day, but defining what counts as political and what should be excluded from

Introduction

ix

politics is notoriously difficult. In everyday Australian speech, politics is often used in a negative way, particularly to refer to situations of conflict in which those involved seem unable to look beyond their own interests or advantage. When someone says things like, ‘This issue is too important for politics to come into it’, or ‘There’s just too much politics’, it is this negative, advantage-seeking idea of politics that they have in mind. In Australia, this view of politics commonly focusses on squabbling between the political parties, so that politics and party become almost synonymous. It carries with it the idea that beyond politics lies some better way of resolving issues. Such a view of politics carries some important truths. Politics is often about conflict. In political systems like Australia’s, much of that conflict is organised around competition between political parties. Parties and other groups in politics are sometimes only concerned about their own interests. Equally, such a view of politics leaves out a lot. Politics often involves conflict precisely because it describes the way people must attempt to resolve important issues. Important issues are those on which values and opinions differ. They are issues that involve decisions which, no matter how carefully they are made, will leave some of those affected unsatisfied and may even leave them exposed to harm or death. Much as we would wish it were so, there is no way other than politics to resolve important issues. There are, of course, different ways of doing politics. Conflict is only part of the story. Politics is also about cooperation and compromise in order to achieve outcomes. Without cooperating with others, a single individual cannot achieve much in politics. Cooperation and compromise are different from conflict but not necessarily better ways of doing politics. Some types of cooperation, including behind the scenes bribery to ensure a particular outcome, would be condemned by most Australians. Sometimes Australians want politicians to fight for important values or interests – to engage in conflict – rather than to accept compromises that result in those values and interests being watered down or lost. Moreover, not all conflicts are the same. Killing opponents is not the same as arguing with them. Politics is partly about what forms of conflict, cooperation and compromise are allowed and how these modes of interaction are organised to produce outcomes (see Pringle 1997).

x

Introduction

This last point reminds us that politics is about much more than political parties. A few moments’ thought will lead to the conclusion that it involves a range of other institutions, actors and practices, including parliaments, governments, elections, bureaucracies, courts, interest groups, the media, protests, voting and other forms of civic participation. A common way of looking at politics is to see these institutions, actors and practices as forming a system characterised by relationships of power or influence. In these power relationships, some actors and institutions bring about effects on other institutions and actors. These power relationships are rarely simple. Imagine that an interest group representing business convinces the government to try to change an employment law. Other interest groups, such as unions, will try to modify or defeat the proposal; the non-government parties will have to come to positions and act on them; the news media will carry commentary attempting to influence the outcome; the minister and public sector agency responsible for employment will have to oversee the drafting of the new law; the courts may be called upon to adjudicate on the validity of the new law; voters may change their votes on the basis of the new law. The power relations that characterise politics are multiple and inter-connected (see Smith 1997). The regularity of power relationships in political systems allows us to compare systems and draw distinctions between them. For example, the Australian political system is often seen as part of a group of liberal democratic political systems, in which the exercise of power is channelled through representative democratic institutions and limited by liberal assumptions about individual freedoms (see Tiffen and Gittins 2004). Liberal democratic systems are commonly contrasted with more authoritarian systems like those in Saudi Arabia, Vietnam or Singapore. More narrowly, the Australian political system is sometimes seen as part of a family of Westminster-style systems deriving from British political practice, or as a hybrid ‘Washminster’ system combining features of the Westminster parliamentary system and American federalism (Thompson 1980). These descriptions allow contrasts to be drawn between Australia and other liberal democracies, such as those of continental Europe, which have different arrangements of political institutions, actors and power relations.

Introduction

xi

The Australian political system is sometimes depicted more critically as one of a group of capitalist democracies in which the scope for the democratic exercise of power is limited by the power of business. Here contrasts can be drawn between Australia and political systems that either eliminate business or restrict its power, such as the former political system of the Soviet Union. Thinking about politics as a set of power relationships raises the question of where the boundaries of politics end. If power is understood as a relationship in which an actor has an effect on another, then it is clear that politics extends well beyond the political system discussed above and into arenas like schools, churches, workplaces, sports clubs, community groups, friendships and families. The insight that power is found everywhere in human relationships was captured neatly in the feminist slogan of the 1970s: ‘The personal is the political’ (Millett 1977: 23–4). On the one hand, then, people interested in the study of politics are legitimately interested in all aspects of human society. On the other hand, political scientists usually want to focus their attention on a more or less delimited set of power relationships. The focus taken in this book is on words used to describe and analyse the most powerful institutions and actors in Australian society and the relationships between them; that is, the institutions and actors whose interactions affect the largest numbers of Australians across the widest range of issues. Some of these power relationships occur within and around the institutions that make up the Australian Commonwealth, state and territory governments; that is, those institutions that together monopolise the use of legitimate force to uphold their decisions within the territory of Australia. Other power relationships occur in wider struggles between a range of powerful non-government actors and institutions. All these relationships are conditioned by the political ideologies and values found within Australian culture (for further discussion of the nature of politics and political science, see Leftwich 2004; Marsh and Stoker 2002). As well as outlining keywords used to describe, explain and interpret Australian governments, the entries in this book explain keywords that refer to these other political actors, institutions, ideologies and values. Australian politics cannot be understood without an understanding of Australia’s place in the world. A number of keywords in this book deal

xii

Introduction

with the ways in which Australia’s relations with other countries have been understood and the international forces that shape Australian politics.

What are keywords? In describing the words discussed in this book as keywords, we have taken our cue from Raymond Williams’s classic book Keywords (1976), which describes keywords as being significant in two related ways. First, they are words that bind together other words into particular patterns of interpretation. Second, they are words that crystallise conflicts over different ways of seeing the world. Keywords are always keywords in a particular context. The particular ways in which keywords bind other words and set up contests differ from place to place and from time to time. In our case, we focus on political words used in Australia that help to organise wider patterns of political thought and activity and/or point to lines of political disagreement. ‘Democracy’, for example, can be seen as a keyword whose use helps to bind together assumptions about a range of other words, including voting, political parties, parliament and federalism. Two Australians using the term ‘democracy’ will often disagree about whether a commitment to democracy commits them to supporting a certain level of socio-economic equality, a particular set of civic values and so on. The keywords cover Australian political institutions and processes (bureaucracy, constitution, ministry etc), practices and behaviour (convention, protest, voting etc), ideologies and movements (feminism, green, liberalism etc), cultural, social and economic forces that affect politics (culture, ethnicity, secularism etc), Australia’s international relations (globalisation, terrorism, trade etc) and general frameworks for understanding Australian politics (democracy, federalism, utilitarianism etc). The emphasis in the selection of keywords is on terms that are relevant to contemporary Australian politics. Some of the keywords included in this book have very long histories. ‘Law’ comes to us from old Scandinavian words that began to be used in England in the eleventh century. ‘Parliament’ comes via the thirteenth-century councils of the English king and his great lords. The ancient Greek

Introduction

xiii

word ‘democracy’ found its way into English use around the sixteenth century, although it only became a keyword in English politics a couple of centuries ago, particularly as a term with negative connotations. These older words are included not because of their historical importance but because they perform the functions of keywords in contemporary Australian discussion. The emphasis in discussing them is on their current usage, although their longer history is briefly outlined. Terms that previously had relevance in Australian politics but are no longer important are not included in the book. Some keywords included here have not been around for very long but have quickly come to play a role in characterising Australian politics. Examples include aspiration, culture wars, economic rationalism, managerialism, spin and wedge politics. The adoption of most of these terms has been largely driven by popular, party political and media debates, and some have not yet fully seeped into academic discussions of politics. We do not think that this is in itself reason to exclude them. We have not tried to guess too much about the future direction of Australian political language but these keywords seem worth including in a book that maps the contemporary vocabulary of Australian politics. Some of the words included in this book, such as other, difference and discourse, are words whose specific use in political analysis has largely remained confined to academic debates. Despite this comparatively narrow use, these words do perform the function of binding together and interpreting more widely used political terms like power, ideology, ethnicity, religion, sexuality and gender. In this sense, they are keywords. Words that are crucial to understanding politics outside Australia but that are not important in Australian academic and wider political discussion have been excluded from this book. Careful readers will note that few of the keywords collected here originated in Australia. Most have been imported from other countries. Some readers might think that this tendency to import words points to an absence of a distinctly Australian political theory or a lack of originality in Australian political thought. Before such a view is uncritically accepted, it is worth noting that a good proportion of the keywords have been adapted after their arrival in this country to fit the distinctiveness

xiv

Introduction

of Australian political conditions and the peculiarities of Australia’s existing political vocabulary (see Cook 1997).

How to read the rest of this book The rest of this book contains a list of 101 keywords and their main variants, arranged alphabetically, followed by entries of around 400 to 700 words on each keyword. Each entry begins with a discussion of a term’s central meaning or meanings, before elaborating on these meanings, cross-referencing other terms, identifying important issues or arguments surrounding the keyword and providing Australian examples. Readers who simply want to confirm the basic meanings of a keyword that they have encountered elsewhere can usually do so by looking up the word and reading the first paragraph of the relevant entry. In some cases, however, the explanation of more complex keywords has required more than one paragraph. Readers wanting to increase their understanding of a keyword beyond the level of a basic definition will need to read the entire entry. A word in bold in the text of an entry indicates another keyword that can be followed up. For example, the entry on parliament contains cross-references to law, judiciary, separation of powers, democracy, federalism, responsible government, ministry, committee, party, representation, power and executive. Readers can use the words in bold to trace relationships between different keywords, allowing them to follow more or less complex trails through the book that reflect their own levels and areas of interest. By their nature, the keywords are comparatively general. Some more specific words and examples appear in the discussion of the keywords that cover them. The entry on parliament, for example, discusses bills, supply, upper and lower houses and deadlocks. Readers who do not find the word they are looking for in the keyword list will often find it listed in the index at the back of the book. A book like this cannot answer all the questions about the meaning of particular political terms that readers may bring to it. For that reason, each entry ends with a short bibliography of further reading. The first reading listed provides an introductory-level discussion.

Introduction

xv

The other texts listed provide more advanced discussion, and in some cases include classic writings on a keyword.

References Cook, Ian 2004, Government and Democracy in Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. — 1997, ‘Australian Political Thought’, in Rodney Smith (ed.), Politics in Australia, third edition, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, pp. 67–81. Henderson, Paul 2002, Oxford Politics Study Dictionary, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Jaensch, Dean 1996, The Australian Politics Guide, Melbourne: Macmillan. Leftwich, Adrian (ed.) 2004, What is Politics?, Cambridge: Polity Press. Marsh, David and Gerry Stoker (eds) 2002, Theory and Methods in Political Science, second edition, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Millett, Kate 1977, Sexual Politics, London: Virago. Penguin Macquarie 1988, The Penguin Macquarie Dictionary of Australian Politics, Ringwood: Penguin Books in association with Macquarie Library. Pringle, Helen 1997, ‘The Nature of Politics’, in Rodney Smith (ed.), Politics in Australia, third edition, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, pp. 3–16. Smith, Rodney 1997, ‘Power’, in Rodney Smith (ed.), Politics in Australia, third edition Sydney: Allen and Unwin, pp. 17–34. Thompson, Elaine 1980, ‘The “Washminster” Mutation’, in Patrick Weller and Dean Jaensch (eds), Responsible Government in Australia, Melbourne: Drummond, pp. 32–40. Tiffen, Rodney and Ross Gittins 2004, How Australia Compares, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Vromen, Ariadne and Katharine Gelber 2005, Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Williams, Raymond 1976, Keywords, Glasgow: William Collins.

Keywords (and their Variants)

Accountability (accountable) Advocacy (advocate, advocated, advocates) Affirmative action Agenda setting Aspiration (aspirational, aspirations) Asylum seeker (asylum seekers) Bureaucracy (bureaucratic, bureaucrats) Business (businesses) Citizenship (citizen, citizens) Class (classes) Colonialism (colonial, colonies, colonisation, colonisers, colony) Committee (committees) Community (communities) Conservatism (conservative) Constitution (constitutional, constitutionality) Conventions (conventional, conventions) Corruption (corrupt) Crisis Culture (cultural, culturally, cultures) Culture wars Federalism (deliberative) Democracy (democracies, democrat, democratic, democrats) Differences (differences, different) Discourse Economic rationalism (economic rationalist) Egalitarianism (egalitarian) xvi

Keywords (and their Variants)

xvii

Elite (elites, elitism, elitist) Environmentalism (environment, environmental, environmentalist, environmentalists) Equality (equal, equally, equals, inequalities, inequality) Ethics (ethical) Ethnicity (ethnic) Executive (executives) Family (families) Federalism (federal, federalist, federation) Feminism (feminist) Freedom (free) Gender (gendered) Globalisation (globalised)

Green Identity politics (identity) Ideology (ideological, ideologically, ideologies) Indigenous Individualism (individualist, individualists) Interest groups (interest groups) International relations Internet Judiciary ( judicial) Law– (laws) Leadership (leader, leaders) Liberalism (liberal, liberals) Managerialism Mandate Media Ministerial advisers (ministerial advisers) Ministry (minister, ministerial, ministers, ministries) Multiculturalism (multicultural) National identity (nation, nationalism, nationalities, nationality, nations) Obligation (obligations) Other (otherness, others) Parliament (parliamentarian, parliamentarians, parliamentary, parliaments)

xviii

Keywords (and their Variants)

Participation (participants, participate, participated, participating, participatory) Party (parties) Policy (policies)

Political socialisation Populism Post-modernism (post-modern) Power (powers, powerful) Protest (protests) Public and private Public opinion Public sector (public sectors) Race (racism, racist) Radical (radicals) Religion (religions, religiosity, religious) Representations (represent, representations, representative, representatives, represented, representing, represents)

Republic Responsibility (responsibilities, responsible) Rights (right) Secularism (secularists) Security Self-determination Separation of powers Sexuality (sexual, sexualities) Social capital Federalism (social democratic, social democrats) Social movement (social movements) Socialism (socialist, socialists) Spin Terrorism (terrorist) Think tanks (think tanks) Third sector Trade Traditional (traditional, traditionally, traditions)

Keywords (and their Variants)

Treaty (treaties) Union (unionism, unions) Utilitarianism (utilitarian) Values (value, valued) Voting (vote, voted, voter, voters, votes) Federalism Welfare Westminster

xix

101 keywords in australian

politics

Accountability

Aa Accountability (accountable)

Accusations of a failure of accountability are regularly made against Australian governments and the political process more generally. At its core, accountability is a type of power relationship in which some actors can require other actors to provide information explaining and justifying their actions. Accountability may also entail sanctions and rectification if the actions are not explained adequately. The fact that one actor has the right to demand an account from another is enough in itself to define their relationship as one of formal accountability. In practice, however, deciding whether accountability is real or not requires judgements about the comprehensiveness of the information provided by the formally accountable actors and the strength of the sanctions and rectifying measures imposed on them when their actions are not adequately justified. In democracies, the key questions about accountability have centred on how elected representatives and non-elected public officials can be kept accountable to citizens for their actions. The long-standing answer to these questions in Westminster-style systems such as Australia has involved a chain of accountability in which junior public servants within the bureaucratic hierarchy are accountable to more senior public servants, those senior public servants are accountable to government ministers, who are in turn accountable to parliament, whose members are accountable to citizens. Accountability has close links with the ideas of responsibility and responsible government. Although some academics distinguish between accountability and responsibility, the two terms are often

3

Accountability used interchangeably in Australian political debate. Those who argue that the two words refer to different things usually view responsibility as centring on an actor’s internally held values, including a sense of professional ethics or duty, while reserving accountability for externally imposed requirements on actors to disclose information and justify their actions. Understood this way, the two ideas can be seen sometimes to produce competing demands on government officials. Accountability mechanisms, for example, may force public servants to disclose information about government practices that they feel they have no ethical or professional obligation to reveal. On the other hand, public servants may feel a responsibility to the public to reveal government information despite the absence of an external body requiring that they do so. From the 1960s, recognition that the traditional Westminster chain of accountability was not working terribly effectively in Australia led to the establishment of new legislative measures and bodies that were independent of the executive and designed to improve the accountability of public sector agencies. These measures and bodies – sometimes labelled the new administrative law – include ombudsmen, various administrative appeals tribunals, and freedom of information legislation. Ombudsmen investigate complaints made by the public about the actions of government officials and recommend changes to bureaucratic practice. Administrative appeals tribunals review specific administrative decisions affecting citizens to determine whether they comply with relevant laws. Freedom of information laws allow citizens, advocacy groups and the media access to some government documents that would otherwise be hidden from public view. The exposure of serious government corruption in the 1980s led some states to introduce anti-corruption bodies, whose work is often seen as helping to ensure public sector accountability (see also ethics). In addition, the economic rationalist thinking that has dominated Australian public policy debate since the late 1980s has demanded that government bureaucracies become more accountable for the ways in which they spend public money. As a result, those agencies are now required to be more transparent in their financial reporting and must also publish information on a range of performance measures. The task of ensuring this financial and

4

Advocacy performance accountability falls largely on auditors-general, whose roles have expanded in the past two decades. The development of these new accountability measures has not diminished debate about government accountability in Australia. Some debate centres on whether the new accountability measures diminish the role and power of elected parliaments in controlling executives. Issues also surround the form of accountability that should be required of statutory authorities such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which are expected to be independent of the government of the day but accountable to the public. Other questions concern whether the private businesses and third sector organisations that undertake functions outsourced by governments following economic rationalist policies can be held to the same standards of accountability as the government agencies they have replaced. Recent Senate inquiries into issues such as border security have focussed on the unclear place in the Westminster chain of accountability of the growing bands of ministerial advisers. Finally, while no recent Australian political figures have argued that accountability is unimportant, some have complained that increased accountability measures impede the efficient delivery of government programs.

Introductory reading Richard Mulgan and John Uhr, ‘Accountability and Governance’, in Glyn Davis and Patrick Weller (eds), Are You Being Served? State, Citizens and Governance, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001, pp. 152–74.

Further reading Warwick Funell, Government by Fiat: The Retreat from Responsibility, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2001. Richard Mulgan, Accountability: An Ever Expanding Concept?, Canberra: Australian National University, 2000.

Advocacy

(advocate, advocated, advocates) Advocacy is a strategy that involves a group speaking or acting on behalf of those less capable of speaking up to or approaching

5

Advocacy government. For example, community service organisations often seek to advocate proposals for reforms to reduce and prevent poverty and inequality (see equality). They speak on behalf of the poor and the homeless, which are groups within society who do not usually have the political resources to act collectively and lobby governments. Advocacy is a well-established strategy used by third sector organisations to influence government policy-making for marginalised groups in Australian society. One of the most well-known advocacy organisations is the Australian Council for Social Services (ACOSS). ACOSS is the peak council for community welfare organisations in Australia; on its website it promotes itself as ‘the principal voice of low income and disadvantaged people in social and economic policy matters’. In the 1950s ACOSS was central to the establishment of communication mechanisms between the community welfare sector and government, and has continued to play an important role along with the state-based social service councils. ACOSS has always had a limited resource base as the people it represents, the unemployed and those in poverty, do not have the resources to fund advocacy. As a result successive Commonwealth governments have provided funding to ACOSS for undertaking advocacy work, and to many other peak representative organisations. Governments and advocacy groups often used to consider that it was important for governments to enable disadvantaged groups to participate in the formulation and implementation of policy that will affect their lives. Advocacy groups have had to adapt their role as policy advocates. In the past the role of these types of organisations was primarily to appeal on behalf of disadvantaged people, based on social or moral values; now these organisations are expected to be able to present persuasive arguments based on evidence-based research and rationality. This expectation is particularly seen through the government-led shift away from the large-scale funding of various representative organisations that took place during the 1970s and towards the establishment of new government-sponsored, consultative mechanisms that foster individual participation, not groupbased representation. Therefore there has been a decline in funding in Australia for traditional advocacy organisations. This has also coincided with a broader debate, led by private sector funded think

6

Affirmative action tanks, about the involvement of the general community and third sector organisations in public policy-making.

Introductory reading Michael Hogan, ‘Advocacy and democratic governance’, in Adam Farrar and Jane Inglis (eds), Keeping it Together: State and Civil Society in Australia, Sydney: Pluto Press, 1996, pp. 155–81.

Further reading Philip Mendes, Australia’s Welfare Wars: The Players, the Politics and the Ideologies, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003. Marian Sawer, ‘Governing for the mainstream: Implications for community representation’, Australian Journal of Public Administration 61 (2002), pp. 39–49.

Affirmative action Affirmative action is a policy process that provides access to institutions for people of a minority group who have traditionally been discriminated against. The idea of affirmative action is to create a more equal society by providing access to education, employment, health care, or welfare. In employment situations affirmative action requires that institutions increase hiring and promotion of candidates of particular groups, such as women or Indigenous Australians. There are also related policy processes on equal employment opportunity (EEO) and anti-discrimination law. For example, anti-discrimination laws in most Australian states mandate that all employers and supervisors must generally treat all their employees and job applicants fairly. In particular, they must not treat them unfairly, or harass them, because of their: sex (including pregnancy and transgender status); race, colour, ethnic or ethno-religious background, descent or nationality; marital status; disability (including past, present or anticipated physical, intellectual or psychiatric disability, learning disorders, or any organism capable of causing disease, for example, HIV); homosexuality (male or female, actual or presumed); age (including not enforcing a retirement age); or carers’ responsibilities. Organisations often now have EEO officers to ensure that correct

7

Affirmative action employment practices are being followed with regard to discrimination. Public sector organisations are generally required to have EEO plans in place to show how they provide equal opportunity for all in their hiring practices. Affirmative action strategies tend to fall within an organisation’s general approach to implementing EEO. That is, a strategy is put in place that levels the playing field for groups identified as disadvantaged. For example, an employer may run special training or recruitment programs for groups such as Indigenous Australians. Affirmative action strategies like this help give previously disadvantaged groups the skills and confidence to allow them to compete on equal terms with everyone else. In politics affirmative action is used in some political parties, such as the Australian Labor Party, to ensure that more women are preselected for winnable seats and thus that there will be more women in parliaments. Affirmative action as a policy strategy is often criticised for singling out particular groups such as women or people with disabilities for special treatment. This criticism takes two directions. In one, it is suggested that singling out one group and treating them differently undermines customary employment by merit. In the other, the criticism is that a group’s difference from mainstream society is actually emphasised rather than de-emphasised by a focussed affirmative action strategy. Some even argue that it is patronising to groups in society, especially women, to give them special treatment through affirmative action.

Introductory reading Chilla Bulbeck, ‘Australian Feminism: The End Of “the Universal Woman”?’, in Paul Boreham, Geoffrey Stokes and Richard Hall (eds), The Politics of Australian Society: Political Issues for the New Century, second edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2004.

Further reading Carol Bacchi, ‘Affirmative Action for Men: “A Test of Common Sense”?’, Just Policy 36 (2005), pp. 5–10. Julie O’Brien, ‘Affirmative Action, Special Measures and the Sex Discrimination Act’, University of New South Wales Law Journal 27 (2004), pp. 840–48.

8

Agenda setting

Agenda setting Agenda setting is the dominant explanation of the relationship between the media and its audience in liberal democracies such as Australia (see also democracy). This set of theories suggests that news does not change basic political attitudes, but that it does influence some types of beliefs and attitudes. News media is portrayed as influencing and shaping what people believe to be significant problems in the nation or in society. Thus the media sets the agenda for broader public and policy debates. In this view, the media becomes the ‘gatekeeper’: making judgements about which issues to report (and which not to), as well as about the placement and prominence to be given to the issues selected for inclusion in newspapers and radio and television news bulletins. Over time some public issues will receive more frequent and more prominent coverage than others, and some will be altogether ignored. The consumers of media over time will believe that some policy issues are more important than others because of the media’s agenda setting effects. This idea can be traced back to Walter Lippmann’s classic 1922 study Public Opinion, in which he portrayed the media as able to paint those ‘pictures in our heads’ that we have of the outside world of politics. One problem with the agenda setting approach is that it does not fully recognise that society and public opinion will also influence the media agenda, and that agenda setting can be a two-way, rather than just a one-way process. That is, news is a commercial, moneymaking venture and journalists and editors with a keen eye on ratings and sales will continually assess which news will interest their particular audience and attempt to give the public the news coverage it wants. For example, producers and journalists from Australian current affairs shows on commercial television (such as A Current Affair or Today Tonight) argue that when they follow particular stories they are responding to what their viewers want. Recent developments in agenda setting theory have tried to develop the model. The theory now focusses on how both news media and public opinion influence the priorities of policy makers. Thus the media agenda can directly shape both public perceptions and government policy agendas. Agenda setting theory also

9

Aspiration recognises that both media and public opinion agendas are influenced by events that happen in the real world. Furthermore, people’s judgements about the importance of issues are influenced by their personal experiences, information that they get from other people in their lives such as family, friends and workmates, as well as from the more distant media. In this view of agenda setting, the media affects its audience but its stories are filtered through people’s other sources of information and events, which form their established frameworks for understanding politics. This view recognises that people go through individualised processes of political socialisation that shape how they think and feel about politics. Nevertheless, the media still has a very powerful role in that it provides our window into the political and policy-making world.

Introductory reading Ian Ward, ‘Media Power’, in John Summers, Dennis Woodward and Andrew Parkin (eds), Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia, seventh edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2002, pp. 401–14.

Further reading David Protess and Maxwell McCombs (eds), Agenda Setting: Readings on Media, Public Opinion, and Policymaking, Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1991. Ian Ward, Politics of the Media, Melbourne: Macmillan, 1995.

Aspiration

(aspirational, aspirations) To aspire is to have an ambition to achieve an elevated or worthy goal. The word aspiration carries with it the idea of movement in a socially desirable direction. Aspiration took on political significance in Australia from the late 1990s, when it was increasingly used by political leaders and media commentators to describe the outlook of voters seeking to secure upward social mobility for themselves and their children through educational attainment, employment advancement, property ownership and higher disposable incomes. These voters are generally seen as concentrated in the mortgage belts of outer suburbs of capital cities, in electorates that had once

10

Aspiration supported Labor but now solidly vote Liberal. The recent federal electoral successes of the Liberal Party are widely interpreted as being partly due to successful Liberal appeals to aspirational voters. For this reason, aspirational Liberal voters are sometimes called ‘Howard’s battlers’. Aspirational voters, sometimes just called ‘aspirationals’, thus describe an apparent value shift among some Australians, associated with a change in voting behaviour. Ideas of class, equality and welfare are bound up in most explanations of the aspirational phenomenon. Aspirational voters want to move from unskilled jobs and older working class suburbs to middle class occupations and new suburbs. This has implications for government. Rather than imposing uniformity through state education, aspirational voters believe that governments should provide opportunities for attainment by subsidising non-government schools. Rather than spending on welfare programs in the hope of creating base-line equality, governments should encourage people into self-reliance through work, while reducing taxes to allow people to spend more of their money as they choose. Some commentators question whether aspirational voters really exist as a distinctive group and little research has been done to demonstrate their existence. Nonetheless, they exist as a powerful idea among politicians and commentators. The aspirational pattern clearly has stronger affinities with individualism than with the more collectivist ideals of the Labor Party. In some ways, the aspirational voter is a renovated version of the idea advanced in the 1970s by David Kemp and others that Australia’s working class electorate had gone through a process of embourgeoisement, or middle classing, since the Second World War, making it impossible for Labor to win elections with its ideals of socialism, union solidarity and equality. Although Labor adjusted its understanding of these ideals during the Hawke and Keating governments of the 1980s and 1990s, some recent prominent figures in the Labor Party have called for it to shift further towards a ‘Third Way’ politics that speaks more directly to aspirational voters. Former Labor leader Mark Latham was a key proponent of such a shift, and based his 2004 federal election campaign around the aspirational image of Australians climbing ‘the ladder of opportunity’.

11

Asylum seeker Introductory reading Carol Johnson, ‘Mark Latham and the Ideology of the ALP’, Australian Journal of Political Science 39 (2004), pp. 535–51.

Further reading D. A. Kemp, ‘Class: The Impact of Urban and Suburban Change’, Chapter 4 in Society and Electoral Behaviour in Australia, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1978, pp. 92–140. Sean Scalmer, ‘The Battlers Versus the Elites: The Australian Right’s Language of Class’, Overland 154 (1999), pp. 9–13.

Asylum seeker (asylum seekers)

Those who seek refugee status are sometimes known as asylum seekers and the practice of accepting refugees is known as offering political asylum. People are often compelled to leave their country of origin because of political and religious persecution or escaping war. Many subsequently try to enter liberal democratic countries that offer refuge, like Australia (see also liberalism). People seeking asylum in Australia are dealt with under Australia’s immigration policy. The policy has two main streams: a migration program and a humanitarian program. The migration program enables people from other countries to come to Australia either in recognition of their business and occupational skills or because they are sponsored by a family member who is an Australian citizen. About 120,000 people are accepted into Australia annually under the migration program. The humanitarian program is especially designed for refugees. A major component of the humanitarian program is the offshore resettlement program, which assists people overseas in need of humanitarian assistance for whom resettlement in another country is the only option. The onshore protection component is for those people already in Australia who arrived unofficially or on temporary visas and who request Australia’s protection. Annually there are about 13,000 humanitarian program places available. Whether or not a person is officially recognised as a refugee is determined by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs.

12

Asylum seeker People make onshore requests for asylum in Australia after they have made unauthorised arrivals. Some governments are relatively tolerant and accepting of onshore asylum claims; other governments will not only refuse such claims, but may actually arrest or detain those who attempt to seek asylum. A small number of governments, such as Australia, have a policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers. There is a major political debate in Australia about accepting asylum seekers into broader society. The debate has focussed on three main areas: first, the terminology used to describe asylum seekers; second, the number of asylum seekers accepted into Australia annually and under what circumstances; third, and most virulent, the debate about the policy of mandatory detention for asylum seekers who have entered Australia. Terminology used in media and policy debate tends mainly to differentiate between asylum seekers and refugees. United Nations conventions imply that asylum seekers are only called refugees once the Australian government has granted their request to stay in Australia. The social movement that arose to protest against Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers chose to use the word refugee in their political discourse to suggest that the government’s requirements were too strict. Other terms used to describe asylum seekers, such as illegal immigrants, queue jumpers and boat people, are derogatory and mainly used by those who support race-selective immigration in general, and Australia’s refugee program in particular. The amount of aid that Australia provides through humanitarian programs is very small when compared to other countries around the world. In 2003 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was concerned that over twenty million people around the world were displaced, with about half of them seeking refuge in places other than their country of origin. The vast majority of potential refugees were from developing countries that were ravaged by war, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and African countries such as the Sudan and Somalia. Most refugees turn to neighbouring countries first for refuge. In 2002, about one million asylum seekers applied for refugee status in developed countries. The top three countries to receive applications were the UK (111,000 applications), the USA (81,000) and Germany (71,000). Australia has experienced far fewer asylum

13

Asylum seeker claims than most other developed countries. Australia received 5860 claims in 2002, 4300 in 2003, and 3100 in 2004. The political debate on detention in Australia has focussed on the circumstances for people whose refugee status has yet to be determined by the Commonwealth government. Under Australia’s migration law, unauthorised arrivals must be detained until they are either given a visa or removed from the country. In 2005 there were 885 persons in immigration detention centres in Australia. The majority of these, over eighty per cent, are visa over-stayers and people who had refused to leave voluntarily. Detention centres are akin to jails, and many are in remote parts of Australia. Some advocacy groups have focussed on the detaining of entire families and the detrimental psychological effects on children in particular.

Introductory reading James Jupp, ‘Immigration Policy and the Attack on Multiculturalism’, in Paul Boreham, Geoffrey Stokes and Richard Hall (eds), The Politics of Australian Society: Political Issues for the New Century, second edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2004, pp. 373–86.

Further reading Peter Mares, Borderline: Australia’s Treatment of Refugees and Asylum Seekers, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2001. Janet Philips and Adrienne Millbank, ‘The Detention and Removal of Asylum Seekers’, Parliamentary Library E-Brief, Canberra: Parliament of Australia, http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/SP/ asylum seekers.htm#removal, June 2005.

14

Bureaucracy

Bb Bureaucracy

(bureaucratic, bureaucrats) Bureaucracy is a word used to refer to a particular form of organisation that is part of the system of governance in a nation and its possible subcomponents, such as state and local government. Major corporations are also understood to be organised as bureaucracies. Bureaucracy is also used as a pejorative; that is, organisations are criticised for being bureaucracies. When bureaucracy is used descriptively in democratic systems, it refers to a group of people who administer a population on behalf of political leaders who have been elected. A bureaucracy, then, is an organisation that provides public administration and which has a specific set of attributes that distinguishes it from other ways to administer a population. These attributes include the following: separate organisations that govern particular aspects of people’s lives, hierarchy, political representatives as heads, rules that are applied to everyone in the same way, and full-time professionals whose salaries do not derive directly from the people they administer. While people may talk about the Commonwealth bureaucracy, they are really talking about a set of relatively discrete organisations. We usually refer to them as agencies or departments. Many of these agencies provide particular services for people or regulatory frameworks within which we live our lives. In Australia, these include agencies that deal with agriculture, transport, health, education, trade, the legal system (Attorney-General), our relationship with foreign governments and organisations (usually called foreign affairs) and defence. Other agencies have more of an oversight or coordinating role. These agencies include Prime Minister and Cabinet

15

Bureaucracy (Commonwealth level), Premier and Cabinet (state level), Treasury and Finance. Hierarchy within agencies produces a chain of responsibility or accountability that ensures that those in lower positions in the hierarchy answer to those above them. At the very peak of a bureaucracy is usually a political actor (i.e. someone who has been appointed by an elected political leader or elected by the people). In Australia the political actor who oversees an agency is called a minister. The fact that the head of an agency is a political actor is also important because it means that an agency receives political (that is policy) direction from someone who is outside the organisation. It makes some sense, in this context, to think of those in an agency as being responsible for implementing a policy that has been decided by someone who will have to account to parliament for that policy and, through parliament, to the people. This is not an easy distinction to maintain, however, and bureaucrats can often be policy makers as well as policy implementers. The consistent application of rules is intended to ensure that those in a bureaucracy (referred to as bureaucrats, public servants, or – though rarely in Australia – civil servants) do not favour some individuals or groups over others. This is an important means for preventing corruption and ensuring that people retain their confidence in bureaucracy itself. Corruption might result from a bureaucrat becoming too close, and therefore too sympathetic, to some members of the public. It might also arise as a result of bribery. Being full-time professionals whose salaries come from general government revenue, rather than from the particular individuals and groups they administer, is also intended to prevent the corruption that might occur if bureaucrats become too close to wealthy individuals and groups and, as a result, tend to favour their interests. Professionalism is supposed to imply impartiality and a concern with the reputation and status of the organisation and not a desire to accrue debts from others or for financial gain. Those who use bureaucracy as a term of abuse tend to do so because they see bureaucracies as rigid, slow-moving, expensive (and ineffective) and elitist. Some of these accusations can be traced back to attributes discussed above. Applying rules in a way that is indifferent to the specifics of a particular case can lead bureaucrats

16

Business to be seen as rigid. Following rules, which often means following particular procedures, can also lead to rigidity and can result in a slow-moving organisation. The cost of bureaucracies, which is borne from general revenues, can also appear excessive and unjustifiable in an organisation that may already be seen to be rigid and slow-moving (and, as a result, ineffective). Accusations of elitism can result from the attitude of professionalism that bureaucrats are supposed to adopt and their indifferent application of rules. It can also be taken to arise as a result of the expertise that those in the bureaucracy bring to the bureaucracy and that they acquire with respect to the matter administered by their agency. The fact that the minister formally responsible for an agency is a political actor will often mean that they are not experts in the field administered by their agency. Ministers rely on advice from senior bureaucrats and may come to depend on them, giving them power without responsibility.

Introductory reading Ian Cook, ‘The Bureaucracy’, Chapter 5 in Government and Democracy in Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 62–76.

Further reading Chris Aulich, John Halligan and Sandra Nutley (eds), The Australian Handbook of Public Sector Management, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001. Mark Considine, ‘Market Bureaucracy: The Changing Form of Social Administration in Australia’, in Adam Farrar and Jane Inglis (eds), Keeping It Together: the State and Civil Society in Australia, Leichhardt: Pluto Press, 1996, pp. 76–91.

Business (businesses)

Business has several related meanings. It can refer to a particular type of activity involving the production and exchange of goods and services for profit. In this sense, business activity is fundamentally associated with the profit-making activities of the private sector. Business can also refer to an organisation, or all those organisations, engaged in activity directed at profit-making production and exchange. In

17

Business this sense, business is often used interchangeably with words like company, firm and enterprise. Business in this sense refers primarily to private sector activity, in which businesses compete with each other in markets. Politics and governments are important in at least two ways for business as an activity and organisation. First, the recent embedding of principles of economic rationalism and managerialism within the Australian public sector has meant that a number of government bodies now seek to make profits and try to run themselves along business lines. In Australia, government organisations that operate in markets and are primarily directed towards profit-making are commonly referred to as ‘government business enterprises’ or ‘government trading enterprises’. Second, and more fundamentally, politics and government are necessary to establish the conditions under which business can operate and markets can exist. Governments do this by recognising private property rights in the law and maintaining law and order services to provide security for business. Without the government providing both legal recognition and practical enforcement of private property rights, businesses and markets could not operate properly. There would be no guarantee that people would adhere to the market mechanisms of buying and selling as a way of distributing goods and services, rather than swindling, cheating or stealing from each other. Australia has highly developed markets in goods and services partly because of the capacity of Australian governments to enforce market rules. Businesses have a strong interest in the particular rules that governments develop to govern markets. Business owners and operators in Australia and elsewhere have formed interest groups to ensure that governments pay heed to the needs of business. When political commentators refer to business, they often have in mind business acting as an interest group in attempts to affect public policy (see also public and private). Key Australian business interest groups include the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a peak body that represents 350,000 businesses, and the Business Council of Australia, which includes the chief executives from around 100 of the larger Australian companies. Other groups, such as the National Farmers Federation, represent particular sectors

18

Business of Australian business activity. Business has been close to the Liberal and National parties for many years. Since the 1970s, the Labor Party has attempted to gain greater acceptance for its policies from business. It increasingly uses donations from a range of businesses as well as trade unions to fund its electoral activity. The policy positions of business and other groups such as unions and environmentalists are often opposed. For socialists, this opposition is a manifestation of their fundamentally opposed class interests in capitalist society. Socialists often also argue that business has a political advantage over unions, environmentalists and other groups. This argument sometimes rests on the claim that business opposition to public policies has much more serious consequences for governments than does opposition from these other groups. Business can afford to spend more than other groups on lobbying and media campaigns. Moreover, most media outlets are owned by businesses, giving them agenda setting power. Finally, some commentators argue that the globalised economy means that large enterprises can now move their operations from Australia to other countries to avoid government economic, environmental and social policies that damage their interests. Other commentators argue that business does not necessarily exercise more power over public policy than unions or other interest groups. Moreover, even in a globalised economy, moving business activities from Australia to another country is usually costly, meaning that business is as affected as other groups by the policy decisions of Australian governments.

Introductory reading John Ravenhill, ‘Business and Politics’, in Rodney Smith (ed.), Politics in Australia, third edition, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997, pp. 291–316.

Further reading Stephen Bell (ed.), Economic Governance and Institutional Dynamics, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Neal Ryan, Rachel Parker and Katherine Hutchings, Government, Business and Society, Sydney: Prentice Hall, 1999.

19

Citizenship

Cc Citizenship (citizen, citizens)

Citizenship is both a practice and a status. As a practice, citizenship describes the relationship between individuals and the state in which they are linked together by sets of rights and responsibilities. Citizenship is also more narrowly understood as status in terms of individual membership of a nation-state’s political community. Having the status of Australian citizenship provides individuals with the capacity to vote in elections, stand for parliament, work in the public service, serve in the armed forces and travel overseas on an Australian passport. Others who live and work in Australia but have not applied to become citizens are generally not able to do these things. It is possible to apply to the Commonwealth government to become an Australian citizen after having lived in Australia continuously for two years as a permanent resident. In Australia it is possible to be a dual citizen. For example, individuals can hold both Australian citizenship and the citizenship of the country they were born in, if that original country permits it. Australians can also retain their Australian citizenship even if they live in another country, such as in the United Kingdom, and receive citizenship status there. Citizenship is often understood as consisting of a bundle of civil, political and social rights that governments are expected to guarantee. Civil and political rights together constitute the basics of political citizenship. Civil rights ensure freedom and equality before the law and include provisions to safeguard general individual freedom, grant freedom of speech, thought and faith, and the right to

20

Citizenship justice. Political rights refer to freedom to engage in acts such as voting, organising, and participating in social movements, associations and parties seeking political office. Social rights underpin social citizenship and include the right to some degree of welfare and security, and the right to live the life of a civilised being according to current standards prevailing in society. Social rights refer broadly to the right to a ‘social minimum’ achieved through social services; for example, access to education and health care, security of employment, adequate housing and income maintenance. Citizenship rights and responsibilities are sometimes implied rather than guaranteed in laws. That is, in a decent society we may expect that government provides a social minimum to all citizens equally, but this may not always be legally enforceable. There are frequent public debates about the responsibilities of government and the rights of citizens and subsequently this relationship evolves and changes over time. For example, in recent years there has been an increasing focus in Australia on whether unemployment benefits provided by the Commonwealth government, during periods that individuals are unemployed, are a right, or entitlement. This debate and subsequent policy change have not diluted the basic right to benefits but have focussed more on the responsibility of citizens to undertake activities such as registering with an employment search agency, applying frequently for jobs and undertaking work for the dole if required, all as a contractual arrangement to receive benefits.

Introductory reading James Walter and Margaret MacLeod, ‘Introduction’, in The Citizens’ Bargain: A Documentary History of Australian Views Since 1890, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002, pp. 1–15.

Further reading David Dutton, One of Us?: A Century of Australian Citizenship, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002. Wayne Hudson and John Kane (eds), Rethinking Australian Citizenship, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

21

Class

Class (classes)

When the word ‘class’ is used in the context of Australian politics it means social class. Social class is used as one way of referring to the major categories into which members of society can be grouped. The key to understanding what people mean when they use the word class lies in the way that they do the grouping or categorisation. There are at least three different ways to use class. Some people use class to refer to groups with different amounts of wealth. Others use it to refer to groups with different social statuses – which is related to, but not the same as, wealth. Still others use class to refer to groups with different economic roles. In Australia, all of these differences entail power relationships between the classes designated. When people talk about class and mean wealth they might divide society into three wealth groups. Here they might talk about people as falling into an upper (very wealthy), middle (middlingly wealthy) and lower (relatively poor) class. In this case they are talking about class as a socio-economic phenomenon (or socio-economic class). This can be measured by charting someone’s income and economically valuable assets. Class in this sense can be seen in differences in patterns of home ownership, the consumption of material goods and lifestyle. While wealth and social status are closely intertwined, especially in a society like Australia, they are not identical. For status can also derive from qualities such as political power or religious authority. While we might think of those in positions of political power as having similar interests to those who have economic wealth, the status of those in positions of political power does not derive from their wealth. We can measure status by considering those attributes that might make others treat them with respect. We usually speak of low- and high-status groups according to the amount of respect that people in those groups receive from other members of society. In Australia, class has a strong relationship with ethnicity in that those who control economic wealth and have higher status tend to be Anglo-Celts.

22

Colonialism Marxists are those most likely to talk about class and mean a social division based on the different economic roles that people play. While economic roles are associated with wealth and with social status, they are not identical to them. A Marxist is most likely to talk about class with respect to a person’s relationship to the means of production. Marxists tend to distinguish between a ruling class and a working, or labouring, class. In a capitalist society, such as Australia, this is about whether someone earns a living by selling their capacity to work or whether someone earns a living by employing others. Marxists would describe those who own a business as owners of the means of production and members of the ruling class. The people who these business owners employ are members of the working class. Marxists do not deny that other classes such as the middle class exist; they simply argue that these other classes are not the most significant classes in a capitalist society.

Introductory reading DougMcEachern,‘ClassAnalysis’, inJohnSummers,DennisWoodward and Andrew Parkin (eds), Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia, seventh edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2002, pp. 323–44.

Further reading Nathan Hollier (ed.), Ruling Australia: The Power, Privilege and Politics of the New Ruling Class, Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2004. Bill Martin and Judy Wajcman, ‘Understanding Class Inequality in Australia’, in Fiona Devine and Mary C. Waters (eds), Social Inequalities in Comparative Perspective, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 163–90.

Colonialism

(colonial, colonies, colonisation, colonisers, colony) Colonialism refers to a relationship in which one country exerts control over another one. There are at least three ways to talk about colonisation. These are military colonisation, economic colonisation and cultural colonisation. The colonisation of Australia from 1788 was an example of military colonisation, as Indigenous Australians were displaced by force and not included in economic processes.

23

Colonialism Military colonisation describes the exertion of control by one country by force. This often resulted in economic colonisation, in which people in a dominated (colonised) country would be forced to produce raw materials (such as gems, gold, iron ore or rubber) or other products (such as tea, coffee, silk or artworks) for consumption by people in the dominant or colonising country. These forms of colonisation often lead to changes of the culture of those in the colonised countries; which is, basically, the acquisition of a different set of values. Sometimes this is done intentionally – in order to create a market for goods produced in the colonising country or to lead a local elite to accept the legitimacy of colonisation. Sometimes this occurs simply as a result of exposing colonised people to the ideas and values of the colonisers. This deliberate or unintentional changing of the culture of a colonised country is known as cultural colonisation. Colonialism is closely associated with imperialism, though the latter tends to be used to refer to a process, beginning around the sixteenth century, in which European countries created empires by seizing control, often by force, of African, Asian, and Latin and South American countries. The words colonialism and imperialism are, for the most part, interchangeable. The United States of America, for example, is sometimes accused of engaging in imperialism when it intervenes in the affairs of other nations. Many former colonies were granted independence during the 1960s and early 1970s in a process usually referred to as ‘decolonisation’. In one example of this, Australia granted independence to Papua-New Guinea in 1975. Some people refer to the period following independence as one of neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism (‘neo’ means new). They argue that while former colonial or imperial powers may have given up direct political control of former colonies, the lack of an economic infrastructure that might support self-sufficiency or produce trade surpluses means that many of these former colonies continued and continue to depend on former colonisers. This does not result in direct control of a colonised country. It reproduces a relationship of dependence, however, in which the former colonies rely on trans-national corporations based in former colonial powers, foreign aid and economic support (from agencies such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) and are

24

Committee forced to accept the trade policies that result from membership of the World Trade Organisation. All of this means that economic and other policies in these former colonies are determined by outside forces to which these former colonies may always be subject. A term more associated with cultural studies than politics is post-colonialism, which refers to attempts on the part of formerly colonised people to create stories that make central their own experiences, perspectives and identities. These stories are told in order to contest the experiences, perspective and identities of the former colonising cultures, which had previously been imposed on them. In the Australian context, post-colonial writing would include the works of Indigenous writers, who contest the ideas that Australia was peacefully settled and that Indigenous people lacked and lack a culture that merits recognition and respect.

Introductory reading Ania Loomba, ‘Defining the Terms: Colonialism, Imperialism, NeoColonialism and Postcolonialism’, Chapter 1 in Colonialism/ Postcolonialism, London: Routledge, 1998, pp. 1–20.

Further reading Richard Broome, ‘Cultural Resistance amidst Destruction’, Chapter 4 in Aboriginal Australians: Black Responses to White Dominance, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001, pp. 56–72. Nigel Parbury, ‘Terra Nullius: Invasion and Colonisation’, in Rhonda Craven (ed.), Teaching Aboriginal Studies, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1999, pp. 101–28.

Committee (committees)

A committee is a group of people commissioned to carry out a task that cannot easily be accomplished by a larger group. In this sense, the parliament might be understood as a committee elected by the people, and the cabinet as a committee of parliamentarians. Committees are a widely used and versatile political tool and most Australian political institutions rely on some kind of committee arrangements to function.

25

Committee Probably the best-known committees in Australian politics are parliamentary committees. The Commonwealth parliament now has a comprehensive system of committees that carries out much of the key parliamentary work of detailed examination of controversial bills, scrutiny of the actions of the executive, overseeing the expenditure of public sector agencies, examination of specific issues of public concern, and general reviews of policy areas. Committees often hold hearings and inquiries to take evidence from ministers, public sector agency managers, advocacy and interest groups, experts and other members of the public. The current committee system began to emerge in the late 1960s. In most state parliaments, the work of committees has expanded over the same period. Some parliamentary committees are standing committees, which continue their work throughout the life of a parliament. Others are select committees that exist only until they have reported back to the parliament on an issue. In bicameral parliaments, committees can be set up by the lower house, the upper house, or jointly by both houses. Upper house committees in which non-government members often have a majority of places are generally more effective than their lower house counterparts, which are dominated by government members. Beyond the parliament, much other political work is done by committees. Cabinet divides into committees of ministers with overlapping portfolio responsibilities in areas such as security to work out policy priorities. Other cabinet committees, such as the expenditure review committee, make decisions about budgetary priorities across all areas of government activity. Within the public sector, inter-departmental committees coordinate policy implementation and administration between different agencies. Political parties and interest groups use committees to develop and hone policy proposals. Governments sometimes establish standing advisory committees or committees of inquiry headed by outside experts to investigate and make recommendations about public issues. While committees are often viewed positively for enhancing cooperation, efficiency and expertise in the process of government, they are not immune to criticism. The basis of much of the criticism is that committees generally rely on other bodies to implement their proposals and recommendations. Most parliamentary committees, for example, are ineffective if the executive cannot be persuaded to

26

Community take up their ideas. When this happens, the only results of committee work are minutes and reports that gather dust on shelves.

Introductory reading Ian Marsh, ‘Consensus in Australian Politics’, in Ian Marsh (ed.), Australia’s Choices: Options for a Prosperous and Fair Society, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003, pp. 239–60.

Further reading Ian Marsh, Beyond the Two-Party System, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995. John Uhr, ‘The Means of Legislation’, Chapter 6 in Deliberative Democracy in Australia, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 122–50.

Community (communities)

Community is a term that is often used in popular and policy debate during periods of social fragmentation. Politicians use the term when promoting closer social bonds, or harking back to the ‘good old days’. In academic writing, community is predominantly used in a fixed way to refer to either a group of people in a geographic location or to a group of people bound together by a particular set of common interests, or a common identity. The term community is used in a political sense by people who want to create or foster unity among people. Politicians will often talk about the Australian community when they are talking about public opinion or the political will of Australian citizens. The community is presented as separate from formal political institutions. In this sense the idea of an Australian community can be used to establish the characteristics of Australian national identity. In recent years there have been public policy debates about a loss of a shared sense of community. Many of these debates have focussed on the question of how governments can intervene to foster social capital and re-ignite community connections. However, the idea of community based on shared location or shared values does not always have positive outcomes for everyone.

27

Community Coercion can be implied in an understanding of community that relies on a dominant set of values to unite members and maintain group cohesion. If individuals or subgroups within the community challenge these dominant values they risk exclusion or ostracism from their community. Thus if those in power use the term ‘community’ to deny internal community differences, such as those based on class, gender, race and ethnicity, religious affiliation or generation, they will face consequences such as a loss of legitimacy from excluded groups. Examples of conflict and the misuse of power can be seen in the way that groups of people who identify themselves as having common interests treat others possessing different values and interests. This leads to conflict between people in powerful positions in society and those who have less power and do not conform to the majority’s version of shared community. This can include politically marginalised groups such as Indigenous Australians, refugees, young people and non-Christian religious groups. Community is also used to refer to particular types of organisation and a sector of work. That is, community-based organisations or the community sector. Community organisations are typically nonprofit, locally based service providers. Community organisations are part of the community sector which is differentiated from both the public sector and the private or business sector. More recently in Australia people have started to refer to the community sector as the third sector, a label which is more inclusive of community-based organisations that do not provide services.

Introductory reading John Kane, ‘Communitarianism and Citizenship’, in Wayne Hudson and John Kane (eds), Rethinking Australian Citizenship, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 215–30.

Further reading Lois Bryson and Martin Mowbray, ‘More Spray on Solution: Community, Social Capital and Evidence Based Policy’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 40 (2005), pp. 91–106. Elizabeth Frazer, The Problems of Communitarian Politics: Unity and Conflict, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

28

Conservatism

Conservatism (conservative)

Conservatism begins with the idea of conserving. It is the desire to conserve, maintain or preserve the way things are that defines a conservative. In the context of politics, conservatives seek to preserve an existing society and the cultural, economic and political practices that underpin that society. They resist those who try to change and improve society through conscious human intervention. These include liberals, anarchists, revolutionary socialists or anyone who might fall under the category of social engineers – people who want to build a better society by introducing specific reforms. Conservatives have two reasons to resist social change. The first is that they believe that a stable society reflects a way of life that suits a particular community and a collective wisdom that has developed and matured over centuries. The second is that any attempt to change a society is doomed to failure because of the limits of the human mind and the impossibility of predicting the outcomes of any attempt to achieve change. Even those conservatives who believe in human rationality tend to be sceptical about what it can achieve. Those who accept the existence of human rationality do not think that all people are rational or are capable of rationality – this is a reason that conservatives are prone to elitism. Differences arise among conservatives when a society has changed. All conservatives will be suspicious of any change that has been intentionally or consciously produced and none would support such changes. Once these changes have been made and should they persist over time, the question of what conservatives should do if they gain political power becomes an important one. Some conservatives can accept change when this change has been slow. The important question for these conservatives concerns whether change can be understood as expressing a consensus among the people rather than revolutionary change. Conservatives cannot accept the latter. Change resulting from consensus may be taken to reflect collective wisdom and may be accepted by some conservatives as essential to the social order that requires preservation.

29

Constitution Other conservatives, though, may find even evolutionary changes hard to tolerate and may seek to revive a past form of society and the cultural, economic and political practices that underpin it. These conservatives can look at the past as constituting a better society than that which exists in the present. These conservatives can seek to introduce changes to society in order to return that society to a pre-existing and in their view superior form. Conservatism has taken a variety of forms in Australia. Some conservatives reject capitalism as an unacceptable change that has produced selfishness and immorality. Other conservatives accept capitalism as part of social evolution and believe that government regulation of markets is an unacceptable change that has to be reversed. The fact that this reversal produces changes in Australian society (especially to an Australian way of life) means that other conservatives reject these attempts to reverse the process of government regulation of the economy. These conservatives include union leaders, who seek to preserve existing work practices. In general, the Liberal and National parties are often referred to as conservative because of their attitude towards social change. This may be misleading as in recent times these parties have pursued conservative social policies and liberal economic policies.

Introductory reading Graham Maddox, ‘Political Ideas and Doctrines’, Chapter 11 in Australian Democracy in Theory and Practice, fifth edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2000, pp. 394–97.

Further reading Mathew Festenstein and Michael Kenny, ‘Conservatism’, Chapter 3 in Political Ideologies: a reader and guide, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 119–74. Cameron Hazelhurst (ed.), Australian Conservatism: Essays in Twentieth Century Political History, Canberra: ANU Press, 1979.

Constitution

(constitutional, constitutionality) A constitution is the law that sets out the fundamental rules by which a society is governed. Constitutions are fundamental in that

30

Constitution they identify the basis of authority for the government, the relationship between the government and the people who are governed, the key governing institutions and the relationships between these institutions. Different constitutions address these fundamentals in varying degrees of detail. The Constitution of Australia, for example, has a preamble and eight chapters. Chapters 1 to 3 deal with the parliament, executive and judiciary, chapters 4 to 7 outline the federal relationships between the Commonwealth and the states, and chapter 8 deals with amending the Constitution. In contrast with this detail, the preamble only passingly identifies governing authority in the people and God, and the rest of the text contains a few limited references to rights enjoyed by the people. The fundamental nature of constitutions is often reflected in two features. First, constitutions are commonly set out in one foundational document that is given special legitimacy by a process of creation. Second, this document is often entrenched, which means that it is harder to change than ordinary law. The text of the Australian Constitution was passed by the British parliament but gains most of its legitimacy in Australia because it was approved by majorities of voters in the Australian colonies in the 1890s. Section 128 of the Constitution requires that before the text of the Constitution can be changed, not only must at least one house of the Commonwealth parliament pass the amendment but it must be agreed to at a referendum by a double majority of Australian voters; that is, a majority of voters in a majority of states. Not all political systems, and not even all Westminster-style systems, have constitutions set out in a foundational and entrenched document. The British and New Zealand constitutions, for example, are found across a number of parliamentary acts and other documents and can mostly be changed by acts of parliament. The Australian method of entrenching the Constitution has resulted in a text that is hard to change. Only eight of forty-four proposals for amendment have been passed at referendums over the last 105 years. The last failed attempt to amend the Constitution involved a 1999 referendum that would have made Australia a republic. The difficulty of formally amending the Constitution has meant that most of the changes to Australian federalism and other political arrangements over the last century have occurred either because

31

Convention the High Court judiciary has changed the way it has interpreted the constitutional text or because of gaps in the text. Key Australian political actors and processes, such as the prime minister and meetings of cabinet, are not mentioned in the Constitution. Much day to day Australian politics thus proceeds according to ordinary law and convention rather than the constitutional text. Constitutional reform is sporadically discussed by politicians, lawyers and political activists but rarely engages the wider Australian population. A 1994 study showed that only eighteen per cent of Australians could identify one topic included in the Constitution and seventy-two per cent claimed no knowledge at all of its contents. The public imagination is only captured when the Constitution is associated with a partisan political crisis, such as the 1975 controversy over the roles of the Senate and the Governor-General.

Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Frameworks for Governing’, Chapter 3 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005, pp. 53–83.

Further reading Melissa Castan and Sarah Joseph, Federal Constitutional Law: A Contemporary View, second edition, Sydney: Lawbook Co, 2005. Helen Irving, Five Things to Know About the Australian Constitution, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Convention

(conventional, conventions) Convention has developed three meanings in Australian politics. In internationalrelations, a convention is the name sometimes given to a treaty between states. The two meanings of convention in domestic politics both relate to the Constitution. In one meaning, a convention is a gathering convened to discuss and propose the text of a constitution or constitutional amendments. Constitutional conventions of this sort have been held sporadically since the late nineteenth

32

Convention century, most recently in the late 1990s to discuss proposals to make Australia a republic. The most common use of convention in domestic politics refers to practices that are not codified in law but are generally accepted as appropriate behaviour by the relevant political actors and commentators. These conventions often fill gaps in the text of a constitution. In Australia, for example, the Constitution does not tell the Governor-General whom he or she should invite to form a government after an election. Convention dictates that the GovernorGeneral should make the invitation to the leader of the party with the support of a majority of members in the lower house of parliament. As this example indicates, Australian conventions tend to centre on the executive and its relationship with parliament. Conventions have usually developed over long periods in Australia and often draw on practices from the United Kingdom and other Westminster-style political systems. They perform useful functions where they are clear and can be used consistently to guide action. Difficulties arise when conventions are ignored by politicians, cannot be applied straightforwardly to a new situation, clash with the written text of a constitution, collide with each other, or cannot be uncontroversially specified. Most if not all of these conditions pertained in the Australian constitutional crisis of 1975. A convention does not have the status of law, although the judiciary may use conventions to guide its interpretation of the law. Breaking a convention does not have the same consequences for a politician as acting unconstitutionally or breaking another law. No Australian prime minister or premier has quite made British Prime Minister Jim Callaghan’s bald claim that a convention applies ‘except in cases I announce that it does not’. Nonetheless, on many occasions prime ministers and premiers have resisted the application of conventions of ministerial responsibility to their governments just as vigorously as they supported the same conventions when they were in opposition.

Introductory reading Colin A. Hughes, ‘Conventions: Dicey Revisited’, in Patrick Weller and Dean Jaensch (eds), Responsible Government in Australia, Melbourne: Drummond, 1980, pp. 41–9.

33

Corruption Further reading Stanley Bach, Platypus and Parliament, Canberra: Department of the Senate, Parliament House, 2003. George Winterton, Parliament, The Executive and the Governor-General, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1983.

Corruption (corrupt)

Accusations of corruption are common in Australian public debate but pinning down exactly what constitutes corruption is difficult. Political and public sector corruption is often defined in Australia as the misuse of public office for private benefit. Corruption of this sort involves a conflict of interests, in which one or more of the private interests of public office holders conflict with their duties to the public interest (see public and private). This sort of definition covers many examples of corruption that most easily come to mind, such as parliamentarians demanding bribes from constituents before they will help them, public servants employing relatives ahead of more qualified job applicants, or government ministers using knowledge of future policy changes to boost the value of their share portfolios. Some corruption, however, does not result in obvious private gain. Suppose parliamentarians use official travel vouchers issued to other parliamentarians from their party in order to represent the party and meet community representatives at public functions around the country. The benefit here does not seem to be a private one. If these actions are understood as corruption, the meaning of corruption must be expanded to include the abuse of official powers and entitlements, even when that abuse is undertaken to achieve legitimate public ends. Serious Australian legislative efforts to define political and public sector corruption mostly date from the 1980s, when a series of corruption scandals prompted state governments to establish permanent anti-corruption bodies such as the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption and the Queensland Criminal Justice (now Crime and Misconduct) Commission. Statutes in some states now contain long but inevitably incomplete lists of

34

Corruption activities identified as corrupt. Paralleling this anti-corruption activity, accountability watchdogs such as ombudsmen and audit offices have highlighted and attempted to reduce public sector maladministration and waste within the bureaucracy that, while it may not be strictly corrupt, has similarly negative effects. As well as investigating specific instances of corruption, the anticorruption bodies have identified systemic corruption risks in the public sector and attempted to raise awareness of corruption issues among bureaucrats. In this context, corruption is often seen as the antithesis of words like ethics and integrity. A focus on ethics and integrity helps to shift thinking from what politicians and bureaucrats should do simply to stay out of trouble to the question of how they should act to advance the public good. The answers to this question vary across different parts of government, and the recent formulation of codes of ethics by different government bodies has sometimes provided an opportunity for reflection on the proper means and ends of political and public sector activity. On the other hand, the development of codes is sometimes undertaken in a ritualised way simply in order to comply with external demands. Some commentators argue that in the same period as anti-corruption and ethics programs have increased, the loss of public sector independence from the government of the day and the dominance of economic rationalism have undermined the ethical underpinnings of public service that once helped to limit corruption in Australian public life.

Introductory reading Barry Hindess, ‘The Definition and Identification of Corruption’, Chapter 1 in Corruption and Democracy in Australia, Canberra: Democratic Audit of Australia, Political Science Program, RSSS, Australian National University, 2004.

Further reading Michael Jackson and Rodney Smith, ‘Inside Moves and Outside Views: An Australian Case Study of Elite and Public Perceptions of Political Corruption’, Governance 9 (1996), pp. 23–42. Rod Tiffen, Scandals: Media, Politics and Corruption in Contemporary Australia, Sydney: UNSW Press, 1999.

35

Crisis

Crisis A crisis is a situation in which stability can no longer be sustained. This can result either from an internal flaw, which in times of stress causes a lack of sustainability, or from an external shock. A personal crisis is one in which a person’s identity becomes unsustainable either because they can no longer maintain psychological stability due to internal causes (such as serious illness) or some external event (such as losing a job, the death of a loved one or divorce). An economic crisis is one in which an economy no longer works (such as in the Great Depression or during the Asian financial crisis) either due to internal problems, such as corruption, or external causes, such as changes in international economic conditions. An environmental crisis occurs when existing practices, especially those associated with consumption, undermine the ecosystem’s ability to sustain itself. A political crisis occurs when an existing system no longer produces stable or sustainable government. A lack of stability can be a result of in-fighting or major division among political leaders. A loss of sustainability may result from a loss of support from the people (this is sometimes referred to as a loss of legitimacy). Political instability or the loss of sustainable government can result from an internal problem that results in poor decision-making or corruption. It may also be triggered by an economic crisis, which creates social division and causes people to lose their belief in the ability of their political leaders. Political crisis can also result from external interventions (such as in the military intervention in Iraq). The closest Australian politics has come to a crisis occurred in 1975 – though this was fairly mild when compared with the sorts of political crises that other countries have experienced. The core of the crisis of 1975 was the Governor-General’s decision to act without the authority of and self-consciously against the wishes of the Prime Minister and Cabinet when the Senate failed to pass bills to supply the money needed to govern (Supply Bills). The Australian Constitution does not stipulate that the Governor-General must act only on the advice of the Cabinet; this was assumed to be the case, however, by all of those involved in Australian politics up to 1975. Normal, traditional, or conventional, practice was that the Governor-General acted only with the advice of cabinet’s principal

36

Culture spokesperson, the Prime Minister. The reasons for this practice are simple. First, the Prime Minister and cabinet represent the party that controls the lower house of parliament and, in a Westminster system, the party that controls the lower house of parliament is the party that is entitled to govern the country until an election occurs that results in a change to this situation. Second, the Governor-General is not elected and, by being the Queen’s representative, is expected to play the role of ceremonial figurehead. The Australian political system became unstable, even in crisis, as a result of a combination of a refusal to support the cabinet and Prime Minister on the part of the Senate and the Governor-General. Only a subsequent commitment to support Supply Bills by parties that hold the balance of power in the Senate has allowed Australian politics to remain stable and made the current political system sustainable.

Introductory reading Graham Maddox, ‘Australian Democracy Under Question’, Chapter 15 in Australian Democracy in Theory and Practice, fourth edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2000, pp. 516–21.

Further reading Arjen Boin, Paul t’Hart, Eric Stern and Bengt Sundelius, The Politics of Crisis Management, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Allan McConnell, ‘Overview: Crisis Management, Influences, Responses and Evaluation’, Parliamentary Affairs 56 (2003), pp. 393–409.

Culture

(cultural, culturally, cultures) Culture is a controversial term that has three main meanings. In the first, culture refers to an individual’s development of particular values, attitudes and sensibilities. In this sense, we might refer to someone as ‘cultured’ or ‘cultivated’ if they appreciate and understand ‘the arts’ and intellectual pursuits. In Australia, this meaning often carries a negative flavour, since it is associated with elite pretensions that cut across Australian egalitarianism. The second meaning of culture refers to the objects, products and practices that embody their makers’ values, attitudes and

37

Culture sensibilities – all the activities and objects that make up ‘the arts’. Again, this meaning has sometimes had negative connotations in Australia, since it has appeared that Australia has lacked any real culture when compared with the rich artistic tradition of Europe or the contemporary artistic vibrancy of the United States. This ‘cultural cringe’ has largely but not entirely disappeared in recent decades. The third definition of culture is the broadest. Here culture refers to the ways in which a group of people collectively makes sense of the world by developing and sharing sets of meanings, attitudes, assumptions and values (see also ideology). This is what people usually mean when they talk about national cultures like Australian culture or French culture, or about sub-national cultures such as Aboriginal culture, and cross-national cultures such as gay culture or surfer culture. In each case, those involved share a distinctive way of life and set of values (see national identity). All three meanings of culture have political implications. Culture as individual development is affected by government policy decisions concerning the structure of school curricula, access to university places, the public provision of access to cultural events and the like. Culture as the arts is also affected by government policies regarding matters such as government arts funding, taxation arrangements for artistic investment, and censorship of artistic works. Moreover, Australian novels, theatre, music, films and visual art often deal with political themes, and Australian artistic workers regularly use their status to comment on political issues. Culture as a group’s collective way of making sense of the world clearly has importance for all aspects of politics. In this context, political scientists and practitioners often talk about ‘a political culture’ as the part of any broader culture that is made up of shared assumptions about the central institutions and processes of power in a society. In Australia, this would include shared assumptions about parliament, voting, the public sector, the Constitution, as well as broader assumptions about matters such as the equality and freedom that citizens should enjoy. The assumptions or orientations that make up political culture can be usefully divided into three groups – cognitive, affective and evaluative. Cognitive orientations refer to knowledge, to what people believe to be factually true of politics (‘Trade unions are affiliated

38

Culture wars to the Labor Party’). Affective orientations refer to feelings about politics, such as love, fear, pride, anger and belonging (‘I hate trade unions’). Evaluative orientations encompass judgements – issues of how politics should be arranged and the goals it should meet (‘Labor policies are unfair to employers’). Much of the debate about Australian political culture concerns the overall pattern formed by these cognitive, affective and evaluative orientations. Different scholars have argued that Australian political culture is best summarised variously as conservative and cynical, utilitarian, radical, egalitarian, participatory and apathetic. It clearly cannot be all of these at once. Others point to differences between the political assumptions of Australians across lines of class, gender, ethnicity, religion, education, age, region and so on to question whether there is a single Australian political culture at all. The issue of how political culture can best be investigated provides a related area of debate, with some scholars using rigorous quantitative and qualitative approaches such as sample surveys, structured interviews and focus groups and others relying on more impressionistic observations to support their claims.

Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Concepts’, Chapter 1 in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 1–21.

Further reading Tony Bennett and David Carter (eds), Culture in Australia: Policies, Public and Programs, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Rodney Smith, Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001.

Culture wars The idea of culture wars began in the United States of America and has been transferred to Australia to refer to a similar, though not necessarily identical, phenomenon. A culture war is a contest between opposing sides conducted in terms of culture. In Australia, it is a fight over what Australian culture is and how it should be understood.

39

Culture wars The problem with accounting for the culture wars is that, like any war, each side views the nature of the war differently. Any attempt to account for it, then, is likely to be viewed as objectionable by, at least, one of the sides that are fighting this ‘war’. The fight, though, seems to have started with the loss of dominance of the construction of Australian culture that, to its detractors, privileged the position of Anglo-Saxon, Christian and male Australians, at least when it lost its dominance in schools and universities. The loss of dominance of this account occurred when it was challenged by Indigenous Australians, immigrants, women and some male intellectuals who objected to the presentation of Australian culture as tolerant, fair, inclusive and progressive; this view of Australian culture is adopted by those who are on the other side of this war. Those who defended the status quo in Australian society attacked their opponents by labelling their views as mere political correctness, rather than accurate accounts of Australian history and legitimate responses to that history. Part of the story, or one of the ‘fronts’ in the war, involved intellectuals and can be traced to the rise of post-modernism in Australian universities in the 1980s. A central feature of these intellectual movements is that their adherents refuse to accept the validity of any attempts to convey the truths accepted within particular communities as true for all communities. Those influenced by these intellectual movements believe that communities can only tell single stories of themselves by excluding the voices of some members of that community. If there was a single story of Australian culture it was one in which some perspectives were excluded and devalued. Part of the story, or another of the fronts, can also be traced to Australian politics and the meaning of multiculturalism. While multiculturalism had been around since at least the 1970s, it can play itself out in either of two ways. In one way multiculturalism is the equal validity of different values, ways of life and senses of self. This view has been associated with the Keating Labor government, under which Australians were encouraged to embrace an Australia constituted by many cultures and to imagine themselves as belonging to Asia. The first way of expressing multiculturalism constituted a threat to the acceptance of an Australian way of life as reflecting an Anglo-Celtic, Christian and male way of life. Those who reject this understanding of multiculturalism are often happy to treat it

40

Culture wars as the recognition and celebration of differences in preferences for music, food, craft and clothing. This view of multiculturalism was articulated by members of One Nation and the Liberal Party under John Howard as a way of reasserting their view of Australian society as tolerant, fair, inclusive and progressive. Yet another part of the story, or front, is the so-called ‘history wars’ in which the battle was over how the history of Australia should be understood, particularly as it related to Indigenous Australians. On one side were those historians who presented Australian history in terms of white invasion and the systematic murder of Indigenous Australians (perhaps even amounting to genocide) and the destruction of the equally valid culture of Indigenous Australians. On the other side were those who presented Australian history as the relatively peaceful occupation and development of the continent, in which white Australians sought, not always successfully, to improve the conditions of Indigenous Australians so that they could enjoy the benefits of a modern society.

Introductory reading Robert Manne, ‘Culture Wars 2: A Battle of Philosophies’, AQ: A Journal of Contemporary Analysis, 70 (1998), pp. 42–5.

Further reading McKenzie Wark, The Virtual Republic: Australia’s Culture Wars of the 1990s, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997. Gregory Melleuish, The Packaging of Australia: Politics and Culture Wars, Sydney: UNSW Press, 1998.

41

Deliberation

Dd Deliberation (deliberative)

Some help in understanding deliberation in the context of politics can be found in thinking of it in terms of the deliberation of a jury in a criminal trial and in considering the idea of deliberative democracy, which has become quite popular over the last decade. Somewhere in the middle is the idea of parliament as a deliberative body, and it is with this that this entry concludes. In our legal system, jurors are asked to decide between two representations of an event. In a criminal court, the prosecution’s role is to convince the members of a jury that a person is guilty of committing a crime. The defence’s role is to convince those same members of the jury that there is sufficient doubt about this person’s guilt with respect to committing the crime that s/he should be found ‘not guilty’. After the prosecution and defence have presented their cases, the members of the jury consider the persuasiveness of the two sides. The members of the jury weigh up the evidence, or deliberate (think of the female figure holding the scales that is a common depiction of the role of the court), and come to a conclusion as to whether the prosecution has proven the acccused’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Support for, and theories of, deliberative democracy begin from a dissatisfaction with representative democracies in which voters make political choices on the basis of limited evidence and little consideration. The difference between voters and members of the jury is that members of the jury are required to attend court, hear all of the evidence submitted and must engage in a discussion through which they determine the question of a person’s guilt. This can take

42

Deliberation weeks and, if done properly, is likely to be an exhausting process. Most voters, on the other hand, obtain little of the information they need to develop a considered opinion, engage in few, if any, discussions about that information and, as a result, make choices that reflect shallow understandings of the choices that they face during an election. Various theories of deliberative democracy emerged as a result of this understanding of the practices of representative democracy. At least two ways of practising deliberative democracy can be used, depending on the size of the community involved. If the community is small enough, its members can be assembled, provided with the sort of information needed to make a decision about a particular issue and then allowed to discuss the issue among themselves, often in small groups. Once this discussion and consideration (or deliberation) have taken place, they can then make a decision concerning that issue. In a larger community, a representative sample of the population can be involved in the deliberation and decisionmaking, which will occur on basically the same lines as outlined for smaller communities. Parliament can be understood as a forum for deliberation by elected politicians to the extent to which alternative positions and policies are discussed with a view to making decisions in the public interest. Parliament is understood as a representative body that engages in processes of deliberation on behalf of the Australian electorate. The operation of Australian parliaments, however, often makes such a claim hard to sustain and gives credence to the views of those who support deliberative democracy.

Introductory reading John Uhr, ‘Deliberative Democracy in Theory’, Chapter 1 in Deliberative Democracy in Australia: The Changing Place of Parliament, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 3–13.

Further reading John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Simon John Niemeyer and Russel Blamey, Deliberation in the Wilderness: the Far North Queensland Citizen’s Jury, Canberra: Land and Water Australia, 2005.

43

Democracy

Democracy

(democracies, democrat, democratic, democrats) Democracy exists when the government of a community is in the hands of the people who comprise, or are citizens of, that community. It can be distinguished from a monarchy (in which society is ruled by one person) and an oligarchy (in which society is ruled by a small group of people). The first democracies were systems in which all citizens were entitled to vote on the major political issues facing their community. This is known as direct democracy. These days, however, when people use the word democracy they usually mean a representative democracy. This is a system in which major political decisions are decided by a relatively small number of people who have been elected by citizens. Representative democracy is usually defended as the only one that is practical in societies with large populations. Problems can arise in representative democracies as a result of the fact that citizens only have the ability to remove their representatives at election times. This creates, at least, two potential problems. The first is that citizens have little say about major political issues except at election times, when they are making decisions about representatives, and only indirectly about political issues. This means that something like democracy only exists during elections, and even then it is representatives, and not issues, about which people are making decisions. The rest of the time the system works more like an oligarchy. Even oligarchs have to pay some attention to what citizens want or risk being overthrown. The second problem is that many citizens leave politics to their representatives and do not invest much time or energy into understanding and developing positions on major political issues. This means that their choice of representatives is an ill-informed one that might result in the election of representatives who may make decisions that do not adequately reflect the interests of citizens. To deal with the first problem, some communities have introduced systems that allow citizens to participate more regularly in the making of political decisions. This might mean allowing them to petition for new elections for political representatives; or to allow

44

Difference them to have a referendum in which they might overturn legislation that has been passed by their representatives or to introduce legislation that their representatives have not or will not introduce. This is sometimes referred to as participatory democracy. The provision for holding a referendum that is contained in the Australian Constitution and the provisions for state plebiscites is as close as Australia has to this sort of system, with the problem being that a referendum can only be held when those in the Australian parliament choose to hold one. To deal with the second problem, some people have advocated what is referred to as deliberative or discursive democracy (see also discourse).

Introductory reading Ian Cook, ‘Democracy in Australia’, Part 2 in Government and Democracy in Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 79–158.

Further reading April Carter and Geoffrey Stokes (eds), Democratic Theory Today, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002. Graham Maddox, ‘Australian Democracy’, Chapter 1 in Australian Democracy in Theory and Practice, fifth edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2005, pp. 1–55.

Difference

(differences, different) While everybody is different, the idea of difference refers to more than any kind of difference. Difference refers to significant divergences between people that result in deep diversity in their senses of self, their values and even in their understanding of the way that society, and the world, works. Difference is strongly related to otherness and to values. People experience others as different when we realise that our values, ways of life and ways of thinking about the world are not like theirs. This otherness can be disturbing and constitutes an important challenge for political systems and especially representative democracies like Australia (see also democracy).

45

Difference The problem is not simply one of treating different people differently, but of the very possibility of someone recognising and respecting another person’s difference. This is important for maintaining a community in which all members feel recognised and valued by society and taken into account within the political system. Some of the more important forms of difference in Australia relate to gender, sexuality, religiosity, ethnicity and physical and mental capacity (see identity politics). The difference between men and women reflects their physiologies and can be understood to result in different senses of self, values and understanding of society. Physiology is only part of the story, though an extremely important part, and the divergent socialisation processes that produce Australian boys and men and Australian girls and women are also a source of their difference. Heterosexuality, homosexuality, androgyny and transgendering constitute another source of difference. These constitute divergent ways to view one’s body and others’ bodies. These can also manifest themselves in different ways of life that mean that people who practise these different sexualities cannot truly understand what it is to live through the other sexuality. Christians and non-Christians, especially atheists, might also be thought to manifest difference. A world in which a God exists and plays a certain role in human social development is not at all like a world in which no such divine force exists. The question of whether humans have souls is not only a point of difference but is a crucial issue in the context of discussions about abortion. Christians and non-Christians must be understood as talking about dissimilar things when they speak about abortion. Indigenous Australians and migrants who maintain their identification with their ‘home’ country and culture also manifest difference, both from each other and from white Anglo-Saxon Australians. Their values and ways of life are sufficiently divergent that it is impossible for them to understand what it is to have another group’s values and ways of life. People who have psychological or physical disabilities (though the prefix ‘dis’ will only make sense to those who experienced these people as different) will also experience difference. Simply moving from one place to another is something entirely different for a person

46

Discourse in a wheelchair, for example, than it is for a person with full motor skills. Generations might also be understood to manifest difference, in that the experiences of one generation can be so unlike that of another that they find it hard to understand another generation. Living through an aged body is likely to be completely unlike living through a young body. All of these differences can be taken to constitute fundamental divisions in the ways that people think, which makes it hard to imagine how a community can be governed in the interests of all of its members. These differences make it even harder to believe in the possibility of representative democracy, even if representatives reflect or mirror these forms of difference.

Introductory reading Seyla Benhabib, ‘Introduction: The Democratic Moment and the Problem of Difference’, in Seyla Benhabib (ed.), Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 3–18.

Further reading Claire Colebrook, ‘The Politics of Life and Positive Difference’, Chapter 2 in Understanding Deleuze, London: Allen and Unwin, 2002, pp. 15–50. Mark Currie, Difference, London: Routledge, 2004.

Discourse In its simplest meaning a discourse refers to a discussion. Individuals engage in discourse when they discuss an issue, and often when they seek to establish a conclusion with respect to that issue. Two or more people engage in discourse when they discuss an issue or a series of issues; this conversation may not result in agreement and may range across a variety of unrelated issues. Additional uses of the word discourse derive from the work of Michel Foucault, a French theorist whose work has been very influential since the 1970s for many scholars in many universities. Foucault was interested in knowledge or, more specifically, what was taken to be knowledge within particular communities. The fact that

47

Discourse particular things are held to be true by the members of the general community meant that they participated in a discourse. This use is quite close to the general one presented above, and differs only because it indicates that some statements of the truth were unavailable. In Australia, for example, the statement ‘the pixies did it’ can be thought of as unavailable to anyone over the age of five. Foucault, however, also suggested that particular groups of scholars formed specialised communities in which specific statements about the truth, or knowledge statements, were possible. Mathematicians, chemists, physicists, lawyers, economists, doctors, sociologists, teachers and political scientists had and have their own discourses in which certain statements could be made and, as a result, taken to be true, or to constitute knowledge. These can change over time. The crucial point with respect to these communities of scholars is that their conversations were and are regulated by particular ways of making statements or of speaking the truth. Their discourse, then, was manifested in their statements of truth, but these statements were themselves governed by particular rules. Some of these rules determined who could speak and the topics about which they could speak with authority. A professor, for example, will be taken to be someone who can say things that must be accepted or at least respected, whereas an undergraduate might not be able to speak and, if they try to speak at the wrong time, may not be heard. An expert in a particular field (such as genetics) might be ‘authorised’ to speak about issues associated with that field but not on other issues like politics. To understand Foucault, we need to recognise that the rules are usually internalised, so that people know when to speak and what to say (or know when to speak and what to say if they are to be taken seriously), and are not overt or consciously imposed. These rules, then, both allow communities of scholars and experts to function as communities and determine what can be said and what can be accepted as truth, or knowledge, within those communities. This is important for politics because of its reliance on experts who claim a privileged position in debates on issues that are important to politics and society. Another theorist with a deep interest in discourse was Jacques Derrida, who saw forms of expression, especially language, as relying

48

Discourse for their meaning on the suppression, or deferment, of other meanings. Derrida’s deconstructive method involved attempts to find the denied or suppressed other that enabled sense. The construction of masculinity, for example, relied on the suppression of the feminine within men and within society (see gender). The construction of the East depended on a valuing or privileging of certain (western) characteristics as normal, thereby rendering the eastern as exotic, different, other, and inferior to the western. This attempt to discover the excluded is referred to as deconstruction. What is important here is that discourses provide these political actors both with authority and legitimacy. Australian politics is currently dominated by discourses associated with economic rationalism and globalisation. The ‘truths’ associated with these discourses are generated by experts and other important public intellectuals who reiterate the ‘truths’ of market liberalisation and internationalisation. Articulating alternative views has become increasingly difficult. This is, in part, because those who may try to do so have no authority and, in part, because these people lack an expert language through which they may do so.

Introductory reading Michael O’Shaughnessy and Jane Stadler, ‘Defining Discourse and Ideology’, in Media And Society: An Introduction, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 190–1.

Further reading Geoff Danaher, Tony Schirato and Jan Webb, ‘Discourses and Institutions’, Chapter 3 in Understanding Foucault, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2000, pp. 30–45. Alec McHoul and Wendy Grace, ‘Discourse’, Chapter 2 in A Foucault Primer: Discourse, Power and the Subject, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994, pp. 26–56.

49

Economic rationalism

Ee Economic rationalism (economic rationalist)

Economic rationalism is a term used to summarise the theory or ideology that governments ought not to do things that can be done by markets and that where governments do act, they should do their best to mimic markets. These ideas have been around for a long time as a branch of liberalism. They began to dominate the thinking of public policy makers, academics and commentators in Australia during the 1980s, and have been central to debates about the role of government ever since. Until the 1990s, these ideas had no common Australian name. The publication of Michael Pusey’s book Economic Rationalism in Canberra, along with the debate it sparked, helped to establish economic rationalism as the dominant label for efforts to redesign Australian governments along more market-oriented lines. Economic rationalism can be understood as a reaction to the growth of government activity and taxation in the decades after World War Two. Supporters of this growth argued that it was driven by legitimate responses to social needs, responses that required consistent provision of government goods and services across the country. Opponents challenged such claims to social and bureaucratic rationality, pointing to government waste and inefficiency, the failure of government intervention to solve key social problems, disincentives to work and entrepreneurship caused by government over-regulation and taxation, and government support flowing to powerful interests. Adopting an economic or market rationality would eliminate these failings of government, allowing citizens greater scope to choose the goods and services they really wanted,

50

Economic rationalism forcing them to bear more of the real costs of those goods and services, and making governments more responsive and efficient. Labor and Liberal governments at federal and state level have pursued economic rationalist approaches to public policy via a range of techniques, such as privatisation, corporatisation and contracting out. Privatisation means governments reducing their activities by selling assets, such as their insurance, banking, transport, power and telecommunications operations, to private business. The government might insist that any private sector buyers continue to meet certain standards of service but the economic rationalist expectation is that market competition will ensure optimal service. Corporatisation involves keeping agencies in government ownership but forcing them to operate more like private businesses. This is done by making them achieve commercial rates of return, allowing private businesses to compete against them and removing any regulations that might disadvantage private businesses in that competition. Under contracting out, private sector organisations bid competitively for government contracts to carry out a range of functions such as construction, security, imprisonment, cleaning and welfare services that once would have been provided by government agencies. The term economic rationalism is almost never used outside Australia, where similar theories and practices are usually described under the banner of neo-liberalism (as, for example, in New Zealand) or neo-conservatism (in the United States of America). Some Australian scholars and public policy makers prefer to use labels like ‘micro-economic reform’ or ‘market liberalism’ rather than economic rationalism, since economic rationalism is often used as a term of abuse by opponents of the push for market-oriented government. Those who stand accused of economic rationalism in turn often characterise their opponents as economically irrational. Vituperation aside, a serious debate has emerged on the impact of economic rationalist policies on Australian norms of government accountability and on socio-economic goals such as equality.

Introductory reading Alan Fenna, ‘State and Market in Australia’, Chapter 4 in Australian Public Policy, second edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2004, pp. 94–121.

51

Egalitarianism Further reading Michael Keating and Patrick Weller, ‘Rethinking Government’s Roles and Operations’, in Glyn Davis and Patrick Weller (eds), Are You Being Served? State, Citizens and Governance, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001, pp. 73–97. Michael Pusey, Economic Rationalism in Canberra: A Nation Building State Changes its Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Egalitarianism (egalitarian)

Many Australians think of themselves as living in an egalitarian society. Egalitarianism, then, might be thought of as something that is practised here. The word is derived from the French word e´ galit´e, which means equality. The motto of the French republic, ‘libert´e, e´ galit´e, fraternit´e’, translates as ‘liberty, equality, brotherhood’. Given that Australia has never been a society of true equals, the question of what people mean when they believe that egalitarianism was and is an attribute of Australian society remains open. To make sense of this view, egalitarianism has to be thought of as just as much about the way that people act and treat each other as it is about their actual economic or social position. In short, egalitarianism can be thought of as a principle in which people treat each other as equals. This can be seen in the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome, which is a practice of cutting people down to size who are acting in ways that suggest a sense of superiority on their part. Achieving success is acceptable. Wanting to be seen as successful, rather than being humble about your success, or ‘parading’ your success, is not. The fear, or potential danger, for egalitarians here is that people will show less respect to those who are not successful. Egalitarianism is not just about the ways that we deal with success, though. It also concerns the way that we interact with people with different incomes, with different levels of wealth, from different social backgrounds (some might refer to this as class) or, possibly, from different cultures. In short, egalitarianism requires that we do not treat different people in different ways, but treat all people the same way.

52

Elite Egalitarianism is also related to the idea of mateship, which is part of the culture of Australian men and less clearly that of Australian women. Everyone can be one’s mate, although here the limit to Australians’ tolerance for cultural differences is likely to become important. Mates ‘look after’, that is support, each other. Mates are chosen because of who they are and not what they earn or own. One reason that people think of Australian society as expressing egalitarianism could be found in the fact that Australia was a penal colony that was created in what was, at least for Europeans, a harsh environment. The extent to which everyone who came to Australia relied on each other for their survival might give some credibility to claims that we live in what is, or was, an egalitarian society. Certainly, the early settlers thought of themselves as living in a country that was not disfigured by the class structure in Europe, in which people were constructed as superior and deserving respect or inferior and not deserving respect.

Introductory reading Elaine Thompson, ‘Introduction’, in Fair Enough: Egalitarianism in Australia, Sydney: UNSW Press, 1994, pp. vii–xii.

Further reading Alastair Greig, Frank Lewins and Kevin White, Inequality in Australia, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2003. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Elite

(elites, elitism, elitist) In politics, an elite is a group of people who control a society. In this context, we can distinguish between the members of an elite and the mass of people, sometimes merely referred to as the mass, who constitute the rest of society. There is a distinction between at least four different sub-elites in Australian society. These are political elites, business elites, policy elites and cultural elites. One of the first questions that must be addressed in this context concerns whether we believe that Australia is a society in which an

53

Elite elite or a set of elites is dominant. Those who think of democracies as systems in which political equality exists are unlikely to believe that, even if an elite or a set of elites exist, it is in control of political outcomes. Others, though, argue that representative democracy, at least, can contain elites. Some even believe that they are necessary for the effective operation of representative democracy. They take this view because they believe that people need guidance from and organisation by those with superior knowledge and skills. An important question concerning elites is whether those in the elite achieved their position due to their (natural) abilities or whether they did so as a result of the effects of artificial barriers, which either provided members of the elite with an advantage or created obstacles or other disadvantages that prevent other people from moving ‘up’ in society. One of the other questions that arises in the context of Australian society and politics concerns whether a single elite is at the top of Australian society, or whether a set of elites can be found there (which might result in division and competition between the subelites). Those who favour class analysis are likely to believe in the existence of a single elite. The members of the political elite derive their political control from the political power that they have available to them. They function as an elite because they are separate from other members of society and have an interest in maintaining their position. The fact that, at the national level, these people regularly find themselves in Canberra allows them to maintain their cohesiveness (though they might compete with each other for power, but will not use that power to undermine their position as part of the elite). The members of Australia’s political elite include politicians from the Liberal, Labor and National parties, especially senior politicians, and influential figures in the party organisations. The members of the business elite derive their political control from their wealth, status and their control over the commercial media. They function as an elite because they share interests, such as protecting their wealth, and use their power to ensure that they remain at the top of the economy and society. The members of policy elites, sometimes called policy communities, derive their political control from their expertise in a particular

54

Environmentalism policy area. Policy elites are usually constituted by senior bureaucrats responsible for a particular policy area (see also responsibility), experts in that field upon whom senior bureaucrats rely for information and advice and, in some cases, some of the people affected by policy (usually the spokespeople for advocacy and interest groups or other activists). We find examples of policy elites in the context of economic policy. The economic policy elite is constituted by senior policy makers in the departments of Treasury and Finance and particular economists in think tanks and universities with whom senior policy makers interact and upon whom they rely for advice and research. They function as an elite because they determine government policy in a particular field. Division can occur within a policy elite because of the values that different subgroups have. If cultural elites have political power, it derives from their influence over the ideas that people accept as normal or the values of members of society. The term ‘cultural elite’ is rarely used with any great precision and is often used to defend the views of the ‘ordinary’ Australians (the mass) against criticism from academics, think tanks and some media commentators (see culture wars).

Introductory reading John Higley and Jan Pakulski, ‘Anti-Elitism as Political Strategy’, in Marian Sawer and Barry Hindess (eds), Us and Them: Anti-Elitism in Australia, Perth: API Network, 2004, pp. 1–15.

Further reading Eva Etzioni-Halevy, The Elite Connection: Problems and Potential of Western Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993. Marian Sawer and Barry Hindess (eds), Us and Them: Anti-Elitism in Australia, Perth: API Network, 2004.

Environmentalism

(environment, environmental, environmentalist, environmentalists) Environmentalism is a policy agenda underpinning a social movement that seeks to influence both public opinion and policy-making

55

Environmentalism on the environment. Environmentalists use diverse strategies such as lobbying, education of the general public and participation in order to protect natural resources and ecosystems. Some of the issues of concern for environmentalists include pollution, species extinction and deforestation, waste reduction and recycling, climate change, and genetically engineered foods. Environmentalism is symbolically associated with the colour green and a green-oriented ecologist ideology. Environmentalism as an idea is used to refer especially to policymaking processes that are constructed to create a sustainable relationship between humans and their non-human environment. A differentiation is often made between ‘green’ environmental policy issues such as wilderness protection and ‘brown’ environmental policy issues such as setting environmental regulatory standards and controlling industrial pollution. The environment has been an evocative policy issue in Australia as a result of Australia’s distinctive and diverse natural environment. Australia has the highest number of natural World Heritage sites, with over a dozen areas listed for protection including Kakadu, the Great Barrier Reef, the Blue Mountains and the south-west Tasmanian wilderness. Conversely, Australia also has one of the highest rates of ecosystem destruction in the world and relies on the use of natural resources in industries such as mining and agriculture for the majority of its trade and export earnings. This tension between the preservation of the natural environment and the use of environmental resources for national financial gain is an ongoing one for policy-makers and environmentalists alike. A key theme in resolving this tension is based on policies of environmental sustainability. The concept of environmental sustainability emerged in the post-World War Two period, when a view of technology-driven economic growth was overtaken by a perception that the quality of the environment was linked closely to economic development. Underpinning this was the idea that people and the environment could and ought to live together harmoniously and that the environment needed to be preserved for future generations. Interest grew sharply in these ideas when the environmental movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s raised awareness of the effects of economic progress on the environment.

56

Equality In Australia environmental organisations grew in number and membership throughout the 1980s, and the Australian Green Party was established in 1992. Environmental policy-making has become integral to all levels of government, in that there are now environment-specific ministries at the Commonwealth, state and territory levels, and the environment is also part of local government’s remit. However ecological or green values have not been fully integrated into policy-making, which still tends to prioritise economic and social development agendas.

Introductory reading Kate Crowley, ‘Environment Policy’, in John Summers, Dennis Woodward and Andrew Parkin (eds), Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia, seventh edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2002, pp. 483–500.

Further reading Michael Howes, Politics and the Environment: Risk and the Role of Government and Industry, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005. Drew Hutton and Libby Connors, A History of the Australian Environment Movement, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Equality

(equal, equally, equals, inequalities, inequality) Differences in our attitudes towards social equality and inequality are among the most significant of the differences to be found in people’s views on politics. Social equality refers to the standard of living (which relates to their income and wealth) that different people achieve. An important question, in this context, concerns people’s views as to whether social inequality is largely natural or socially constructed. Another question that arises in policy debates concerns a choice between the pursuit of equality of opportunity and the pursuit of equality of outcome. Those who think of inequality as largely natural do so because they believe that it is the interaction between the natural variations among people and the sorts of things that are valued in our society that

57

Equality produce social inequality. They believe that, for the most part, talent and willingness to work hard explain the social inequality to be found in Australian society. Social inequality is acceptable because it reflects natural variations; indeed, social inequality is desirable because it shows that able and hard-working people are being rewarded for their abilities and effort. Having higher taxes for high-income earners (sometimes called a progressive taxation system) produces disincentives for talented people to work as hard with their talents as they might do, and may even constitute a form of punishment. Equality of opportunity is, for those who have this view of inequality, the central political project. It requires preventing the discrimination that has prevented women, Indigenous Australians and non-Anglo Australians from being able to fully exploit their talents. Those who think of social inequality as artificial do so for a variety of reasons. The more subtle, and difficult, of these explanations begins with the idea that income and wealth are only available in a society, which means that income and wealth require a society to which everyone contributes. Inequality may have something to do with individual ability, but it is the (artificial) social context that everybody helps to create that allows some to gain more than others. A simpler reason for treating inequality as artificial is the view that social inequality derives from advantages that are not generally available; that is, this view begins with the idea that equality of opportunity does not exist. This means that the social inequality that we perceive is not a reflection of natural ability but is a reflection of the obstacles that are produced with society, which makes them unnatural or artificial. Proponents of the latter position sometimes present equality of outcome as their goal. What this means is not always easy to understand. Many of those who take the view that inequality is natural take equality of outcome to mean making people alike. They see it as something that reduces the possibility for people to express natural variations. Those who defend equality of outcome seem to view it as a process of achieving equality of access to the resources that people need to live healthy and fulfilling lives. An emphasis on health and fulfilment is somewhat different from an emphasis

58

Ethics on wealth, though there is some evidence that wealth and health are related and may reflect a deeper difference in values. The point in this case is to respect and embrace all variations and not just those that produce wealth. Equality of outcome, then, can be taken to mean equality in people’s capacity to express all of their natural variations.

Introduction Rodney Smith, ‘Equality’, Chapter 5 in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 96–121.

Further reading Alex Callinicos, Equality, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. Louis P. Pojoman and Robert Westerland (eds), Equality: Selected Readings, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Ethics (ethical)

Ethics can be used in at least three different ways. We can use it to refer to the principles through which people live their lives (personal ethics), we can use it to refer to the activity of reflecting on what the correct thing to do is (philosophical ethics or Ethics), and we can use it to refer to the principles that guide the actions of people in particular professions (professional ethics). The first of these uses is important because it registers the fact that people can have divergent views on what the correct thing to do is for them. A person might be thought of as unethical when they do not have any principles (referring to someone as unprincipled is the same thing as referring to them as unethical). This means that their behaviour is not governed by any attempt to do the correct thing. A person might be thought to be unethical if they adopt different principles in similar situations, or articulate different principles to justify their behaviour at different times (they might justify one action in terms of doing the correct thing for society and another in terms of doing the correct thing for their family and another in

59

Ethics terms of doing the correct thing by their religious faith). A person’s principles should not change too much, if that person is to be thought of as being ethical. The second use of the word ethics can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. Aristotle lectured and wrote about ethics in the fourth century BC and scholars have reflected on the question of what the correct thing to do is from that time until today. While it is generally considered a branch of philosophy, the study of ethics has taken on significance, primarily because of the interest that has developed in professional ethics. Professional ethics refers to those sets of principles that determine what the correct thing to do is for people in positions of authority or power. These include teachers, doctors, lawyers, senior managers in private companies, politicians and bureaucrats. Professional ethics is important because of the particular activities these people undertake and the resulting specificity of the ethical dilemmas they face. Ethics is important in politics because corruption has often been seen to be a feature of Australian politics. An interest in the extent to which a set of principles governed the behaviour of Australian politicians (whether they were constrained by professional ethics) reached a peak in the 1980s and 1990s, when a series of inquiries revealed corrupt or unethical behaviour on the part of some politicians and bureaucrats. This led to the development of codes of ethics and the creation of anti-corruption agencies, particularly at the state level.

Introductory reading Michael Jackson, ‘Immorality May Lead to Greatness: Ethics in Government’, in Scott Prasser, Rae Wear and John Nethercote (eds), Corruption and Reform: The Fitzgerald Vision, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1990, pp. 160–77.

Further reading Simon Blackburn, Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. John Uhr, Terms of Trust: Arguments for Ethics in Australian Government, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005.

60

Ethnicity

Ethnicity (ethnic)

Ethnicity is a term used to identify differences between groups of people on the basis of a cluster of factors such as ancestry, region, customs, language and religion. Definitions of ethnicity also commonly include an element of collective self-recognition. An ethnic group must be conscious of having a distinctive shared identity that differentiates its members from other people. To sustain these distinctive self-identities, ethnic groups rely on formal or informal mechanisms, including religious ceremonies and organisations, schools, cultural clubs, welfare associations and newsletters. Ethnicity is closely related to other terms like race, nation or national identity without being exactly the same as them. The use of race is more likely to draw attention to physical differences than the use of ethnicity. National identity may be defined in ways other than by a common ethnicity. People who share an Australian national identity, for example, often also identify themselves as belonging to different ethnic groups (as Greek Australians, Chinese Australians and so on). This is a common feature of nations throughout the modern world. Very few nations are made up of people from a single ethnic group. Although people with British or Irish backgrounds still make up a majority of Australians, since the Second World War their numerical dominance has steadily declined as Australia’s sources of immigration have become more varied. Tracing people’s countries of origin may indicate little about how they really perceive and experience their ethnicity. The proportion of Australians with ‘unmixed’ origins going back just two generations is small – perhaps only one-third of the population. Most Australians could define their ethnicity in various ways depending which elements of their backgrounds they emphasise. How Australians define themselves within their possible range of ethnic identifications and how they are categorised by others, including governments, are the keys to the impact that ethnicity has on Australian politics. Until the advent of multiculturalism in the 1970s, ethnicity was not generally recognised as a politically relevant category in

61

Ethnicity Australia. The waves of British and Irish immigrants from 1788 were divided by religion and national origin but assimilated over time into an Anglo-Celtic group. The more diverse post-war immigrants were expected to follow this pattern and assimilate or integrate with the norms of the dominant Anglo-Celts, who generally saw themselves simply as ‘Australian’ and not as an ethnic group, let alone one among many. Some of this changed from the 1970s when the Labor and Liberal parties began to mobilise support around recognition of different ethnic identities. This shift created the opportunity for ethnic leaders to make demands on behalf of their communities and to establish power bases for themselves within parties, government bureaucracies, statutory bodies and the like. Multiculturalism has challenged but far from supplanted the idea that ‘ethnic’ only means those outside the Anglo-Celtic majority (SBS is still seen as an ethnic broadcaster, for example, while the ABC is not). In a similar way, ethnicity remains a cause for suspicion for some, who see it as a fundamental source of conflict within Australian society (‘Why don’t they think of themselves just as Australian, like the rest of us?’). Such suspicions helped to fuel the rise of the One Nation Party in the late 1990s. In response, some ethnic community leaders established the Unity Party to defend multicultural ideals and the rights of minority ethnic groups. Neither party experienced long-term success. Despite the fears of some, the presence of a wide array of ethnic groups has not led to social instability or threatened the political system in Australia.

Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Immigration’, Chapter 10 in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 224–51.

Further reading James Jupp (ed.), The Australian People, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Gianni Zappala, Four Weddings, a Funeral and a Family Reunion: Ethnicity and Representation in Australian Federal Politics, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997.

62

Executive

Executive (executives)

In its formal and general sense, the executive is the arm of government that implements laws passed by the parliament within constraints set by the courts that interpret the law and judge actions against it (see separation of powers). The executive thus includes a large number of people. At the Commonwealth level, these include the Governor-General as representative of the Queen, the prime minister, members of the cabinet and the wider ministry, ministerial advisers and other staff employed to support ministers, as well as the many public servants and other public sector employees that carry out the day to day implementation of the law. This formal and general meaning of executive is not usually helpful in understanding references to the executive in Australian political discussion. For one thing, when people talk about the executive, they are not usually thinking about all the different types of people identified above. In this sense, the executive is a much more fluid concept than either the parliament or the judiciary, whose memberships and institutional boundaries are relatively clear. For another, our interest in the executive is not always about its role in implementing laws but in the fact that it plays a key role in making laws. These two points are explained below. The executive can mean a number of institutional groupings of people. The Constitution gives executive power to the GovernorGeneral, advised by an Executive Council that he appoints. In practice, Executive Council meetings are formalities. They are attended by the Governor-General and some government ministers to lend formal legality to cabinet decisions. The Executive Council is a littleknown body, and what people more often have in mind when they refer to the executive is the prime minister, cabinet and wider ministry who make key decisions about government policy and administration. Of course, ministers do not make these decisions on their own, but rely heavily on ministerial advisers and senior bureaucrats to come up with good practical ideas for governing. The senior public sector bureaucrats in turn rely heavily on the work, skills and knowledge of their more junior colleagues. The fact that the boundaries of executive decision-making cannot be neatly drawn has led some

63

Executive political scientists to think of the ‘core executive’ as a network of key ministers, bureaucrats and advisers whose precise membership changes from issue to issue. If the function of the executive is understood as implementation, then most executive activity takes place well outside this ‘core executive’. It is carried out by ‘street level’ public sector workers such as nurses, social workers, teachers, taxation officers, police and customs officers, whose activities are overseen by junior and middle-level managers. Such occupations commonly require individual public sector workers to exercise discretion about how the law should be implemented. This myriad everyday executive activity, with its scope for discretionary action, raises important issues of power, corruption and accountability. The notion of the separation of powers notwithstanding, in practice the core executive has a crucial role in making as well as implementing Australian law. Almost all of the laws passed by parliament are proposed by the ministry and drafted under the supervision of ministers, advisers and senior bureaucrats. In addition, some of this legislation deliberately leaves space for the executive to create rules known as ‘regulations and ordinances’ so that the legislation can operate. This delegated legislation gives the executive considerable scope to make law. The parliament can amend or reject regulations and ordinances, setting up the scope for conflict between it and the executive. Whatever the outcome of particular conflicts of this kind, it should be clear that the executive does much more than simply implement laws made by the parliament.

Introductory reading Glyn Davis, ‘The Core Executive’, in Brian Galligan, Ian McAllister and John Ravenhill (eds), New Developments in Australian Politics, Melbourne: Macmillan, 1997, pp. 85–101.

Further reading John Halligan, ‘Public Sector Reform’, in Chris Aulich and Roger Wettenhall (eds), Howard’s Second and Third Governments, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005, pp. 21–41. Patrick Weller (ed.), Menzies to Keating: The Development of the Australian Prime Ministership, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992.

64

Family

Ff Family (families)

Family is often invoked in political debates in Australia but it is an extremely difficult concept to define. A family is a group of people who share bonds deriving from kinship, co-residence or care. Although families are sometimes thought of as natural units within society, the groups that are recognised as families differ markedly from one society to another. Families are always socially constructed and official definitions of family used by governments are always deeply political. Family is used in contemporary Australian political discussion in two main ways. The first is as a focus of social policy in areas such as child care, parental leave, domestic violence and family law. The second is as a part of a socially conservative political agenda proposed by sections of the Coalition and Labor parties as well as religiously based minor parties, such as the new Family First Party and the established Christian Democrats. Social policy concerns that affect families have changed in recent decades to reflect a shift in the public- and private-sphere responsibilities of men and women, from a traditional model of male bread-winners and female home-makers to a model in which many women have opportunities for workforce participation and some men have taken on greater roles within the home. The emergence of government-funded and community-based child care centres since the early 1970s is an example of this shift. The need for child care provision was profoundly shaped by women entering the workforce, both out of economic necessity and a desire to play a greater part in public life. In more recent times, policy discussions have been dominated by the need to create a work and family life balance. The

65

Family focus has been on policies such as parental leave, as very few working women have access to adequate maternity leave provisions. Australia and the United States of America are the only advanced democracies that have not instructed all employers to give women access to a period of paid maternity leave. Discussion of family and government policy approaches is not straightforward. In discussions of family policy generally, and maternity leave in particular, Prime Minister John Howard has utilised ideas of individual choice. Howard has placed emphasis on the opportunity for families to choose actions that suit them, and his argument has been that it is inappropriate for governments to intervene in private decisions of how parents make caring arrangements. This argument is also reflected in the reluctance by the government to introduce radical policy reform to address the decreasing birth rate in Australia. New policy has been directed at individual mothers who are now paid a baby bonus when their new child is born, rather than restructuring work to make it more family friendly. Conservative political actors have often used the idea of family to mobilise political support. In recent times there has been renewed debate over what qualifies as a family. The debate arose in response to a push from sections of the gay and lesbian social movement for legalising marriage between same-sex partners and increasing lesbian and single women’s access to fertility-related medical services. This debate has led to a reaffirmation by the major parties of traditional conceptions of the family that privilege heterosexuality and immediate biological connections in their definitions.

Introductory reading Deborah Mitchell, ‘Family Policy’ in Brian Galligan, Ian McAllister, John Ravenhill (eds), New Developments in Australian Politics, Melbourne: Macmillan, 1997, pp. 180–95.

Further reading Michael Bittman and Jocelyn Pixley, The Double Life of the Family, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997. Kathie Muir, ‘Political Cares: Gendered Reporting of Work and Family Issues in Relation to Australian Politicians’, Australian Feminist Studies 20 (2005), pp. 77–90.

66

Federalism

Federalism

(federal, federalist, federation) Federalism is the doctrine and practice of dividing or sharing powers between a central government and two or more regional governments whose existence is entrenched in a constitution. The Australian Constitution, for example, authorises the existence of the Commonwealth government and the governments of the Australian states and shares responsibilities for different aspects of governing between them. The Constitution grants some powers, such as minting money and collecting customs duties, to the Commonwealth government alone, allows both the Commonwealth and the states to exercise other ‘concurrent’ powers such as taxation, and leaves a large number of ‘residual’ powers for the states alone to exercise. Federal systems of government are usually contrasted with unitary systems, in which powers are constitutionally concentrated in a single national government. Unitary systems of government often devolve powers to more localised bodies, as the Westminster parliament in the United Kingdom has done to councils and the regional Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish parliaments. The United Kingdom might now look like a federation. The difference between its unitary system and Australian federalism is that the Westminster parliament can take back those powers and dissolve or re-arrange the councils and regional parliaments at will, whereas the Commonwealth parliament cannot take back powers from the states unless the Constitution (as interpreted by the High Court judiciary) says it can, and it certainly cannot abolish state governments. Local governments are not constitutionally protected parts of Australian federalism and can thus be reformed or abolished at the discretion of state governments. People support federal rather than unitary systems of government for a range of reasons. Sometimes it is chosen because a country is regionally divided, particularly along lines of ethnicity, race or religion. Federalism reduces the possibility of one regional group dominating the rest and allows each group to pursue its own values. Sometimes, federalism is seen as a way of limiting the power of government over citizens by pitting governments against each other. Federalism

67

Federalism and the separation of powers are both seen as checks and balances against an executive growing too powerful. Sometimes, federalism solves a problem of nation-building, in which existing governments are reluctant to let go of all their powers but will concede some in order to form a larger political unit. All of these arguments have been invoked in Australia since the late nineteenth-century constitutional conventions saw the Australian colonial governments agree to federate. Australian critics of federalism tend to stress three arguments. The argument from democracy suggests that federalism frustrates the national will of the people by preventing central governments from implementing policies they were elected to pursue. The argument from equality is that federalism allows people in identical circumstances to be treated very differently simply because they live on one side or another of a state border. The argument from efficiency associates federalism with government duplication and waste. In response to these types of criticisms, state and Commonwealth governments have attempted to develop more collaborative models of federalism in recent decades, pursuing uniform legislation and cooperative approaches to policy issues. There are, of course, limits to cooperation. Some limits arise when different parties govern at the Commonwealth and state levels. Other limits to cooperation arise because state governments believe that conceding too much ground to other states or the Commonwealth will damage their standing among local voters and state-based interest groups.

Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Federalism’, Chapter 4 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005, pp. 87–118.

Further reading Martin Painter, Collaborative Federalism, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Cheryl Saunders, ‘Building Federal-State Cooperation’, in Ian Marsh (ed.), Australia’s Choices: Options for a Prosperous and Fair Society, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003, pp. 225–38.

68

Feminism

Feminism (feminist)

Feminism is a diverse collection of social theories, political movements and philosophical positions focussing on the experiences of women in terms of their social, political and economic situation. The diversity in feminist thought means that it is difficult to talk about one set of feminist principles. Instead, we need to focus on the range of feminist ideas and priorities. In the Australian context there is an increasing disjuncture in priorities between feminists who are politically active in socialmovements and policy-making and the academic-based feminism found in universities. This is partly due to the influence of post-structuralist and post-modern philosophies in academic feminism. As a social movement, feminism particularly focusses on minimising gender-based inequality (see equality) and promoting women’s rights, interests and issues in society. Feminist political activism has campaigned on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity or parental leave, equal pay, sexual harassment, discrimination and sexual violence. Australia is a unique case where feminist policy makers have been very successful in having genderbased concerns integrated in policy. The bureaucrats who did this work were often called ‘femocrats’. Some important legislative milestones include the 1972 Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission decision to extend the equal pay concept to ‘equal pay for work of equal value’, the 1984 Sex Discrimination Act, and the reinvigorated focus on affirmative action through the 1999 Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act. There are four main recognised theoretical positions in academicbased feminist thought: liberal feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism and post-modern feminism. These are not the only positions but it is helpful to examine these categories to see how different strands of feminist thought use existing theoretical traditions to prioritise different areas of knowledge and fields of research. Furthermore, not all of these positions are equally represented in feminist academic thought. Liberal feminist ideas tend to be found in political science and policy studies; post-modern feminist theories

69

Feminism have been integral in history, sociology, philosophy and cultural studies. Socialist and radical feminism are more isolated strands of thought now and were at their height in the 1980s. Liberal feminists undertake research on gender inequality and changes in the social position and representation of women. They look towards government-based intervention to introduce policies, such as affirmative action, that will reduce inequality between men and women. Radical feminists tend to focus on women’s oppression in society that is specifically related to women’s bodies. Themes explored in radical feminism include patriarchy, gender stereotyping and sexual objectification. This leads radical feminists to focus on issues of pornography, prostitution and reproductive technologies. Socialist feminism prioritises research about women’s paid and unpaid work in both the public and private spheres, and especially the division of labour between men and women. They advocate recognition of the effect of women’s unpaid caring work for children on Australia’s economic success. Socialist feminism looks at how relationships of class and gender interact to shape women’s position in society. Post-modern feminists introduced the idea that gender, and even sex, are social constructs, and thus research the construction of gender and sexuality, developing alternate models for studying social relations. In the 1960s and 1970s, feminist movements and feminist theory largely represented – and were concerned with problems faced by – western, white, middle class women, while at the same time they claimed to represent all women. Since that time, many post-modern feminist theorists have challenged the assumption that ‘women’ constitute a homogeneous group of individuals with identical interests. These theorists began to focus on differences among women and the intersection between gender and sexuality with other social identities, such as race and class. Many feminists today argue that feminism can still be a grassroots social movement that seeks to cross boundaries based on social class, race, culture, and religion. Post-modern feminists suggest that feminism will always be culturally specific and can only address issues relevant to the women of a particular society or social group: for example, female circumcision in some Muslim communities, or the ‘glass ceiling’ to promotion for middle class women in developed

70

Freedom economies. Thus there is debate among feminists over the extent to which certain issues, such as sexual violence and mothering, are universal across cultural boundaries.

Introductory reading Elisabeth Porter, ‘Feminist analysis’, in John Summers, Dennis Woodward and Andrew Parkin (eds), Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia, seventh edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2002, pp. 381–400.

Further reading Barbara Caine (ed.), Australian Feminism: A Companion, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998. Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: The History of Feminism in Australia, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1999.

Freedom (free)

If there is one word that can be thought of as a fundamentally political word, it is freedom. For when people think of freedom, they are usually thinking of freedom from those who have power over them, and this, more often than not, means governments (though it can mean fathers and mothers or other members of society). And if it is not government from which people seek to be freed, it is certainly governments upon whom they rely to protect, and possibly promote, their freedom. The crucial question, in this context, concerns what it means to be free. The simplest, and most common, way of thinking about freedom is to take it to mean people being unrestrained in the way that they live their lives. That is, Australians can, and often do, think of themselves as free when they feel that nothing is preventing them from doing what they want to do. Many of the rights that people claim involve being free. Australians commonly expect freedom to practise their religion, freedom to speak, freedom to organise, freedom with respect to the practice of their sexuality, and possibly freedom to use, even abuse, the drugs of their choice. These rights, or freedoms, are always asserted in the face of some impediment, or

71

Freedom obstacle, that prevents people from practising their religion, speaking, organising, practising sexuality and using drugs as they wish. This approach to freedom is often thought of in terms of ‘freedom from’; that is, it is thought of as freedom from constraints that prevent people from doing what they want to do. This view of freedom is often associated with classical liberalism, which promotes a laissez-faire (French for ‘leaving to do’) or non-interventionist government – this is a government that, as much as possible, leaves people to do what they want (sometimes this is described as allowing people to pursue their own ends). Another way to think about freedom is to think of it in terms of people’s abilities. That is, people can think of themselves as free to do something only when they are able to do it. Not being stopped from doing something is only a minor part of this. For, from this perspective, it does not make sense for people to think of themselves as being free to play tennis when they don’t have tennis balls, a tennis racquet and a tennis court with a net. They might be able to affirm the freedom to play tennis even when they lack everything that they need to play tennis, if they can afford the things that they need to play tennis. Even in these circumstances, though, they might still need to know how to use the tennis racquet and score, and they are going to need other people against whom they can play. To be free to play tennis then is a much more complex thing than not being prevented from playing tennis. This view is associated with modern, welfare or social liberalism (this is one form of liberalism with a few different names) and the rise of the welfare state. If people are to be free to compete with others, these liberals believe, then they need an education. Those children who do not have access to such an education need to be provided with an education (it is like being provided with what you need to play tennis). The question of what it takes to provide real equality of opportunity is hard to answer. Children might be thought to require a supportive home environment, a sound diet, access to parks or sporting facilities (to help their bodies develop properly), and possibly even access to libraries and museums (to allow full development of their minds). This view of freedom is sometimes understood in terms of ‘freedom to’; that is, it is thought of as freedom to do those things that people want to do.

72

Freedom Two older and much more difficult understandings of freedom are also available. In one, freedom is understood as freedom from the lower, darker, base or animal drives or instincts. Take someone who might like to drink or use drugs. They might think of themselves as free when they are not being prevented from drinking or using drugs (they might also demand to be provided with these when they can’t afford them, but this would seem to be taking things a little too far). Being free to do yourself harm because you cannot control urges that are ultimately self-destructive is not, for some people, being free and might be understood as being constrained by a lower self. The other understanding of freedom follows this distinction between physical desires and appetites and something higher. In this case, though, the higher selves that we can form are a result of our participation in society and it is our ability to live in accordance with the requirements of being a civilised member of our society that determines whether we can be thought of as a human being with freedom. People have a choice, then, of acting like selfish children who do not think about the sort of person they are and autonomous adults who think about what sort of person they are and want to be the best person they can possibly be. Only the adults are free, as the children are slaves to their selfishness.

Introductory reading Graham Maddox, ‘The Ideals of Democracy’, Chapter 17 in Australian Democracy in Theory and Practice, fourth edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2000, pp. 566–8.

Further reading John Gray, ‘On Negative and Positive Liberty’, Chapter 4 in Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy, London: Routledge, 1991, pp. 45–68. George Williams, The Case for an Australian Bill of Rights: Freedom in the War on Terror, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2004.

73

Gender

Gg Gender (gendered)

Gender is a term used to differentiate between the masculinity and femininity of people and their characteristics. It moves beyond dividing people into biological sexes of male or female. Gender is a social construction. It has been an important tenet of feminism that the social differences between men and women are not naturally occurring but are constructed by social practices, norms and beliefs. For example, the gendered nature of parenting has been questioned and feminists have argued that it is not a natural occurrence for women to do the vast majority of child care in the home. Rather this occurs due to social expectations and the traditional practice of mothers’ roles as primary carers and men’s roles as ‘bread-winners’. This also relates to the social perception identified by feminists of a hierarchical divide between public- and private- sphere responsibilities. This means that private-sphere caring work is constructed by society as women’s work and not as important as paid work and political work in the public sphere. Gendering is a dynamic process, not a static one, which means that our understanding of gendered practices changes over time. This can be seen with the increasing economic contribution that mothers make to families through undertaking paid work outside the home. Conversely, fathers now also spend more time with children doing caring work than at any other stage in Australian history. Gender can also be seen in how we think about paid work in general in that some jobs are more likely to be seen as masculine jobs and some jobs as feminine. This perpetuates a gender divide. For example, women in Australia numerically dominate in

74

Gender caring-related work such as child care, nursing, primary school teaching and hairdressing. Men numerically dominate physically and in time-intensive work through jobs as motor mechanics, police officers, politicians and surgeons. Masculine-oriented jobs often have longer hours of work (e.g. surgeons and politicians), are less flexible and family friendly, are more professionalised and are often better paid. This introduces a powerful hierarchy in both the perception and practices of masculine work and more feminised work, which maintains the gender divide in paid work. Furthermore, politics is often portrayed and practised as masculine work in Australia. Only about twenty-five per cent of Australian state and Commonwealth parliamentarians are women and major parties have been reluctant to enforce affirmative action through quotas to increase the number of female representatives. However, there are many women active in local government and community-oriented politics. The last two presidents of the traditionally masculine-oriented Australian Council of Trade Unions, Jennie George and Sharan Burrow, have been women. Other political lobbying organisations such as the National Farmers Federation and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry have predominantly male boards. It would be incorrect to assume that all discussions of gendered practices focus on the inequality of women (see also equality). Increasingly, theoretical work has explored the concept of masculinities to explore how men do not all experience gendered power relationships in the same way. These analyses have focussed on policy areas that demonstrate male disadvantage in Australia, such as health, illness and schooling, where young men tend to be weaker at humanities and communication-oriented subjects than young women.

Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Gender’, Chapter 9 in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 197–223.

Further reading R. W. Connell, Gender, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002.

75

Globalisation Sex Discrimination Unit, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Striking the balance: women, men, work and family, Sex Discrimination Unit, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Sydney, 2005, available at: http://www.hreoc.gov.au/ sex discrimination/strikingbalance

Globalisation (globalised)

Globalisation refers to a process in which the economic, political and cultural separation between nations is breaking down and an international order is emerging (see international relations). The idea of globalisation has enormous political and ideological power and is presented as a powerful contemporary phenomenon to which people and governments must adjust. Accelerating processes of globalisation, Australians have been and are being told, require adjustments to our attitudes and expectations. Its acceleration might be attributed to the emergence of multi- or trans-national corporations, the development of improved transportation and communications technologies, especially the internet, and possibly the breakdown of the Soviet Union. One of the effects attributed to globalisation is a reduction in the capacity of national governments (including the Australian government) to control and determine the destinies of the people for whom they might normally be thought responsible. In economics, globalisation refers to the emergence of international (global) markets in commodities, services and labour. Multiand bilateral agreements (such as the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement and agreements with the USA and China respectively) are taken to be important manifestations of economic globalisation. Highly mobile trans-national corporations are also important to economic globalisation. In politics, globalisation refers to the emergence of international systems of governance. In this international system, international organisations, such as the United Nations (whose security Council is dominated by western countries) and the European Union, exert some of the political control over people that national governments once exerted. Economic

76

Globalisation and political globalisation are closely related. This can be observed in the capacity of institutions such as the World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund and World Bank to pressure governments to adopt particular economic, trade and regulatory policies. Cultural globalisation is related to both economic and political globalisation, but in this case it is a world culture that is emerging. This world culture seems deeply western and strongly American, so in this case globalisation might be thought of as the internationalisation of western (and particularly American) culture. This spread is a result of the effects of the spread of western music, Hollywood movies, cable and satellite television in which western content dominates (and in which western values and commodities feature) and the internet. A preoccupation with globalisation has been contested from two directions. Some people challenge the desirability of globalisation, which they see as simply another form of colonialism. These people are ‘anti-globalisation’ because they believe that it is really the spread and deepening of western exploitation of non-western countries and, in some cases, because they believe that it damages national cultures and the local and global environments. This view is contested by those who contend that it is a means to promote development in western and non-western countries and to move beyond narrow national interests. Other people challenge the reality of globalisation and argue that there is no clear evidence that some rapid and new form of internationalisation has taken place. Many of them understand ‘globalisation’ as an ideological tool through which neo-liberals who want internationalisation do so because they have an interest in the spread of capitalism and a reduction in the power of national governments or both. These neo-liberal supporters of globalisation are ideologically committed to markets and to reducing the role of governments, at least with respect to economic matters. By convincing others of the reality and necessity for accepting globalisation, they promote a particular ideology. The more people they convince of its reality, the more real it becomes. Thus globalisation might be a good example of an ideology in action.

77

Green Introductory reading Ian Cook, ‘Globalisation’, Chapter 3 in Government and Democracy in Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 199–215.

Further reading David Held (ed.), A Globalizing World?: Culture, Economics, Politics, London: Routledge in association with Open University Press, 2004. Andrew Heywood, ‘Globalization: Theories and Debates’, Chapter 7 in Politics, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002, pp. 125–56.

Green Green is a term in common usage in Australian politics that refers to the environmental focus of ideas or policies. The term was first used by the environmental movement and was derived from the common occurrence of the colour green in nature. The Greens is also the name adopted by significant minor parties in Australia and other liberal democracies that have emerged from national environmental movements (see also liberalism). Further, Greenpeace is the name of a very high-profile, international organisation in the environment movement. Green ideas and theories are not homogeneous. There are two main traditions of green thought: environmentalism and ecologism. The first relies on a policy agenda to manage the environment, while the second is an ideology that proposes major change in society’s practices and values. Ecologists and environmentalists are inspired to act by the environmental degradation they see around them, but their strategies for remedying this are very different. Ecologists argue that nature is an inter-connected whole that includes humans and non-humans. An ecological view puts nature at the centre of political analysis. It is differentiated from the anthropocentric views (views that are human centred) that are found in other ideological frameworks. Ecologists argue for the intrinsic value of and demand recognition for the non-human environment, seeing it as vitally important to humanity. They advocate limits to growth and human consumption and point out how humans damage the environment. They are sceptical of the capacity of technology and science to solve environmental problems. This agenda is

78

Green also often referred to as ‘deep green’ or ‘deep ecology’. Those who take a ‘light green’ or ‘shallow ecology’ perspective will accept the general premises of ecologism but argue that these premises need to be harnessed to benefit human needs and ends. There are also hybrid ideologies that build on ecologist thought. For example, eco-socialism explains environmental destruction in terms of capitalism’s focus on growth and profit. Eco-feminism suggests women are naturally ecological and argues that the gendered and war-oriented nature of society leads to environmental destruction. In Australia, ecological thinking has been important in underpinning campaigns for the preservation of wilderness and forests. Ecological campaigners have argued that these areas should be not logged or developed because nature should be preserved for its own sake. But these types of argument have been difficult for the environmental movement to maintain as political debate often shifts to the interaction between the human and non-human environment, presenting environmental preservation as a constraint on human action. A good example of this is the perceived trade-off between the preservation of forests and timber workers’ jobs. Other major environmental issues, such as climate change and mining, inevitably become focussed on how to deal with the uneven interaction between humans and their environment.

Introductory reading Peter Christoff, ‘Environmental Citizenship’, in Wayne Hudson and John Kane (eds), Rethinking Australian Citizenship, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 200–14.

Further reading Timothy Doyle, Green Power: The Environment Movement in Australia, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2000. Robin Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory: Toward an Ecocentric Approach, New York: SUNY Press, 1992.

79

Identity politics

Ii Identity politics (identity)

Identity politics describes activity undertaken by social movements to represent the interests of distinctive groups in society. The members of these groups share and unite around common experiences of injustice or discrimination. Identity tends to be used symbolically to unite groups and lead to political action. The groups argue that they are socially or politically excluded, marginalised or disadvantaged in comparison to the wider society of which they are part. Identity-based movements seek to achieve better social and political outcomes for the members of such groups. Distinctive forms of identity that have been mobilised successfully into political action and social movements in Australia include gender, sexuality, race, religion, ethnicity and disability. Discussions and negotiations over identity are an important element of social movement activism. Notions of identity are articulated by movements in terms of pride in that identity. Action is underpinned by group assertion of the value of the participants and their uniqueness in terms of developing and sharing a particular identity. For many groups, the development of this collective identity is a major priority of activism and political expression. For example, disability has emerged as an area of identity politics in which arguments are presented for equal opportunities in the workplace and in public life for people with disabilities. Disability activists have found it important to use identity politics to shift disability from being treated purely as a medical issue to being seen as an issue that affects society more generally. People with disabilities have acted politically to demand citizenship rights to caring

80

Ideology services and integration into the broader community, rather than being excluded through institutionalisation or hospitalisation (see also rights). By asserting difference through identity politics, people with disabilities are making claims for political and policy-making recognition of their particular needs, as well as for full recognition as citizens participating in broader society, rather than exclusion from society as a result of their difference. While identity politics has placed particular issues of difference within society onto the broader political agenda, it has also been criticised by some commentators. In a climate of political conservatism, advocacy on behalf of marginalised social groups is often maligned as ‘special interest group’ activities. Thus groups that ask for policy-making recognition of particular identities are labelled as divisive, requesting special treatment that unreasonably undermines universal service provision.

Introductory reading Geoffrey Stokes, ‘Introduction’, in Geoffrey Stokes (ed.), The Politics of Identity in Australia, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 1–22.

Further reading Amy Gutmann, Identity in Democracy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Carol Johnson, Governing Change: Keating to Howard, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2000.

Ideology

(ideological, ideologically, ideologies) Ideology refers to people’s ideas and, in particular, the ideas that they have about how politics works and what can be achieved through political action. The word ideology is used in two different but related ways by those who write and talk about politics. Some use it to describe what goes on in people’s minds in normal situations; others use it to describe what goes on in people’s minds when they have been manipulated by others.

81

Ideology The most widely held ideologies for those in the west include liberalism, socialism and conservatism. Each can be understood descriptively (simply as ways that people understand their world) and critically (as systematic misrepresentations that serve the interests of dominant groups, or elites, in society). Each presents a different view of society and the relationships that form it, the rules that people use to govern their behaviour and their sense of others. Each can also be understood as serving the interests of elites and against the interests of those who are not part of the elite. Understanding how people use the word ideology, though, begins with the idea that one of the most important things for all people is to make sense of the society and world in which they find themselves. In other words, people need to be able to connect the various events that they experience, either directly or through the media, to form some sort of meaningful pattern. This is crucial because they need to know how to act (especially towards others), to explain what happens to them and to know what they need to do in the future to achieve their goals. So all people carry a set of ideas as to how and why society and the world are as they are and what they have to do to achieve what they want (see political socialisation). It might be worth thinking about ideology in the following way: When people want to drive from where they live to someone else’s house, they need a number of things. First, they need a map. If they have done the trip before, they might have this map in their head; if they haven’t, many are likely to use a street directory. They also need to know how to drive on a road with a number of cars (that is, they need to know the road rules). They also need to have some sense of how other drivers drive and think (mostly they need to believe that others will generally follow the road rules, but knowing about the road rage that we or other drivers can manifest can affect the way that we drive). Ideologies are something like the maps and the other knowledge that drivers use. Those who use the word to describe what goes on in people’s heads believe that all people have ideologies and that, while these ideologies differ, this reflects the fact that different people have different ways of making sense of society and the world. The maps that drivers use are representations that, while they may not be true in any absolute sense, connect people and place them in

82

Indigenous particular relationships. The knowledge of the road rules drivers have are constructions of the behaviour that we are expected to manifest in living in and sharing a society with others. Their understanding of the way that others think and drive is the equivalent of prejudices that people have about how others think and act that explain what other people do when they act politically. Those who use the word ideology to describe what is going on in people’s minds when they have been manipulated by others contend that the maps that people use are limited and crude (even false) representations that reflect the interests of political leaders or elites who seek to control their behaviour. The road rules that people ‘know’ and their understandings of the ways that other drivers think and drive reflect their indoctrination into a particular society. In short, ideologies are devices that are used to control people to ensure that their behaviour does not disrupt society. Some of the people who think of ideologies in the second, more critical, way believe that ideologies are devices that leaders use to control and direct the behaviour of their followers. Others see them less as deliberately used tools and more as a form of common sense that serves the interests of dominant groups. They might refer to these ideologies as ‘hegemonic’ because they preclude other ways of making sense of society.

Introductory reading Andrew Heywood, ‘Introduction: Understanding Ideology’, Chapter 1 in Political Ideologies: An Introduction, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998, pp. 1–23.

Further reading Mathew Festenstein and Michael Kenny (eds), Political Ideologies: A Reader and Guide, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Michael O’Shaughnessy and Jane Stadler, ‘Defining Discourse and Ideology’, Chapter 7 in Media And Society: An Introduction, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 189–95.

Indigenous The term Indigenous Australians is now most commonly used to describe the descendants of people who lived in Australia before

83

Indigenous the arrival of white European settlers in 1788. The term Indigenous Australians includes people often referred to as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. The word Aboriginal has been used in the English language since the seventeenth century to mean the first, earliest known, and indigenous inhabitants. It was used in Australia to describe Indigenous people as early as 1789 and was subsequently capitalised to become the standard name for Indigenous Australians. Over the past two decades, the term Indigenous has gradually come to supersede Aboriginal as a more appropriate word for the original inhabitants. Indigenous Australians are estimated to be about two per cent of the total population. They are predominantly urbanised, but a substantial number live in settlements in remote areas of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The health and economic difficulties they face are substantial. For example, the life expectancy of Aboriginal people is many years less than that for the wider Australian population. Aboriginal people are also substantially more likely to be imprisoned than the general population, and the rate of Aboriginal suicide in police custody remains high. Rates of unemployment, health problems and poverty are higher for Indigenous Australians than in the general population, while the school retention rate and university attendance are lower. Indigenous Australians had to struggle to achieve basic rights of political citizenship. Albert Namatjira, the famous artist, was the first Indigenous Australian to be given Australian citizenship, in 1957. Indigenous Australians were given full rights to vote in Commonwealth elections in Australia in 1962, and in state elections shortly after, with the last state to do this being Queensland in 1965. A 1967 referendum was passed in Australia with a ninety per cent majority that allowed the Commonwealth government to make laws with respect to Indigenous people, and for Indigenous people to be counted in Australia’s census for the first time. This has been the largest proportion to vote yes in the history of Australia’s referendums. Indigenous-based policy-making was enhanced by the establishment of the first Commonwealth Department for Aboriginal Affairs during the Whitlam Labor Government (1972–75). This department was headed by an Indigenous Australian during the

84

Individualism 1980s, when Charles Perkins became the first Indigenous person to become head of a government agency. There has been an active and successful Indigenous social movement in Australia. Demands for land rights and self-determination, and more recently reconciliation, have been important mobilisation themes of the Indigenous movement. Recognition of a distinctive Indigenous identity and difference in Indigenous experiences has also been important. While there has been legal recognition of Indigenous Australians’ prior ownership of Australian land in parliamentary legislation and the High Court Mabo and Wik cases, these claims are still politically contested. Self-determination is also a controversial topic as it suggests the need for Indigenous selfgovernance. This has not been achieved, despite the existence of successful Aboriginal regionally based Land Councils. In 2004, the main Indigenous representative organisation, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), was dismantled by the Commonwealth government. Policy-making affecting Indigenous Australians was returned to government departments.

Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Chapter 7: Invasion’, in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 141–69.

Further reading Bain Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003. Scott Bennett, White Politics, Black Australians, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1999.

Individualism

(individualist, individualists) Individualism refers to one of the most powerful ideas in Australian society. It denotes a particular conception of what other people are basically like or, in other words, our views on human nature. Individualism can be expressed in either of two forms. In one form, individualism can be contrasted with socialism. Here the point of contention concerns whether people are fundamentally individual

85

Individualism or fundamentally social. In another form, individualism can be contrasted with collectivism. In this case, individualists argue that governments should give priority to the needs of the individual and not to that of a collective (group or community) in which individuals find themselves, as collectivists contend. In the first form, individualists understand people to be fundamentally separate (or individual) beings who are affected by, but not products of, their social environment. In contrast to socialists, individualists believe that people are only minimally social and that their sociality is much less significant to them than their individuality. This is the reason that some individualists argue that societies do not exist, by which they mean that a social group is no more than a collection of individuals. This view is sometimes called atomism. The reference to the atom is intended to indicate an entity that can combine with other entities without affecting either its separateness or nature. If we adopt the form of individualism explained in the paragraph above, then we are almost compelled to accept the view that individuals need not (and should not be forced to) sacrifice their needs and interests to those of the community (or collectivity to which they belong) or otherwise conform to anything more than the minimal requirements of the community (see security). Self-sacrifice and conformity constitute a refusal to be individual, which would weaken or diminish the collective. We do not need to take this view, however, to support the view that the individual has priority over the community. Even if we believe that people are not individual in the first sense, we may want them to act as if they are. We might think that this makes people more creative and productive or has some other benefit that would be lost if people always had to give priority to the needs of society over their own needs. So the second form of individualism could derive from the first, but need not do so. Individualism is most commonly associated with liberalism. It is undoubtedly central to classical and neo-classical (or neo-) liberalism, but its role in social liberalism is less clear. Classical and neo-liberals adopt the ‘invisible hand’ theory associated with Adam Smith, in which each individual’s pursuit of his or her interests leads to greater productivity and social improvement. Social, or modern, liberals, though, believe that society has a much greater role in the

86

Interest group formation of individuals than classical and neo-liberals believe. So, their understanding of individualism differs slightly and they have a stronger sense of the interdependence of individuals.

Introductory reading Graham Maddox, ‘Political Ideas and Doctrines’, Chapter 11 in Australian Democracy in Theory and Practice, fourth edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2000, pp. 398–406.

Further reading L. Susan Brown, ‘Liberalism and Theories of Individualism’, Chapter 2 in The Politics of Individualism, Montreal: Black Rose Press, 2004, pp. 10–37. Jack Crittenden, Beyond Individualism: Reconstituting the Liberal Self, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Interest group (interest groups)

In political science, several descriptive terms are used to label the political groups that act outside of the formal institutions of government. These include interest groups, pressure groups, lobby groups, non-government or community-based organisations, issue movements and social movements. Interest group tends to be the term used to describe organised groups that attempt to influence government and policy-making processes. The Directory of Australian Associations lists the details of over 5500 different interest groups and associations in Australia. Interest groups promote or protect a particular interest or issue and try to make governments change or reinforce an existing policy position. Interest groups do not all have equal power and status (see power). There are ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ interest groups. Insider groups often have an economic focus, have financial backing and have direct access to governments. They are also often seen as groups that are protecting their own interests and those of their members in their relationship with government. Recognition of the ‘insider’ status of a particular group usually depends on the period of time being examined, and on the party in government. For example, trade

87

Interest group unions can be currently categorised as ‘outsider’ groups because they do not have direct access to the Liberal–National Commonwealth government. However, trade unions were insider groups when Labor was in power from 1983 to 1996. This insider status resulted in corporatist-style Accords, or income policy agreements, between the government and unions. Unions have retained a closer, but not wholly ‘insider’, relationship with Labor governments in states such as New South Wales and Victoria. When the Liberal–National Commonwealth government is discussed, groups such as the National Farmers Federation and the Business Council of Australia are often considered to have insider status. The more permanent ‘outsider’ interest groups usually have limited power resources and limited access to government. They are often seen as groups that promote new interests or values, rather than protecting established ones. Examples of these sorts of outsider groups are small organisations like the feminist Women’s Electoral Lobby, the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby and anti-abortion Right to Life groups. These types of groups are interested in promoting a particular view of social life and are not primarily motivated by economic interests. While the insider–outsider distinction is useful for thinking about the differences between interest groups, it is not really comprehensive. This is partly because the labelling of particular groups can change over time, depending on which political party is in government. The distinction also reinforces a limited focus on the economic power of groups, at the expense of examining the moral or social power and influence enjoyed by some interest groups. Sometimes it is important to classify interest groups according to other dimensions, including the types of strategies they use, such as lobbying or advocacy. An interest group uses lobbying strategies to approach government directly and to try to convince it to act in their interests. Lobbying has historically been associated with United States politics; however, it is playing an increasingly important role in Australia as interest groups draw on public relations, advertising and media ‘spin doctors’ to achieve their goals (see also media). Many large law and accounting firms now have specialist government relations or public affairs departments that engage in lobbying activity. Specialist

88

International relations lobbying organisations often have established communication links with a political party and are thus hired by other organisations who want to get their political message across to that party. Other lobbying organisations are bipartisan and will often have individuals among their staff who have worked for both the major parties as, for example, policy analysts or ministerial advisers. Former parliamentarians of all persuasions, including former ministers, are also often found working in lobbying organisations. Lobbying is a strategy also used by advocacy-oriented interest groups. These groups might not have direct access to ministers, because they do not have established relationships with them or other power resources that guarantee them access. Presenting petitions to parliaments and providing submissions to parliamentary inquiries are two ways of lobbying government when direct access to government ministers is not easy.

Introductory reading Trevor Matthews, ‘Interest Groups’, in Rodney Smith (ed.), Politics in Australia, third edition, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997, pp. 269–90.

Further reading Ian Marsh, ‘Interest Groups and Social Movements’, in Ian McAllister, Steve Dowrick and Riaz Hassan (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Social Sciences in Australia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 323–44. — Beyond the Two Party System: Political Representation, Economic Competitiveness, and Australian Politics, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

International relations International relations refers to the politics that occurs between and across states, as opposed to the domestic politics that takes place within states. International relations is also commonly called international politics or world politics. In this context, and somewhat confusingly for Australian readers, states do not refer to the regional jurisdictions and boundaries within the Australian federation, such as Queensland. Instead, in international relations, states refer to

89

International relations countries, such as Australia. International relations is usually taken to include all the political actors that operate across or outside state borders. Apart from states themselves in their dealings with each other, these actors include global businesses, formal international organisations such as the United Nations, international non-government organisations such as Oxfam and less formal political networks such as human rights movements (see also social movements). The key difference between domestic politics and international relations has to do with government. While domestic political disputes are resolved authoritatively by institutions of government that are recognised by their citizens as exercising legitimate power, in the international realm there is no higher level of government that can authoritatively resolve disputes between countries. In the international context, the governments of countries such as Australia are recognised by other countries as having sovereignty over their domestic affairs, while sovereign countries like Australia have to work out how to interact with other sovereign countries such as the United States, New Zealand and Fiji. The ‘external affairs’ power set out in Section 51 (xxix) of the Australian Constitution explicitly gives the Commonwealth government (rather than the Australian state governments) authority to engage in such international relations. In the absence of an international government, states have collectively developed a range of institutions and practices to try to maintain order and avoid damaging conflicts. These include international customary law, treaties and United Nations (UN) resolutions. International customary law is made up of a series of mutual understandings between states about appropriate behaviour that operate much in the way that conventions do in defining appropriate behaviour in Australian domestic politics. Treaties are negotiated between states and formally bind them to act according to specific or general provisions. They may specify an institution, such as the International Court of Justice, to determine disputes between the parties. Resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly recommend or direct states to take particular actions. Although the UN superficially looks like a world government and its General Assembly resembles a parliament, UN resolutions are not binding on states. Unlike the governments of its member states, the UN lacks its own police or army to enforce its resolutions. Although the UN calls on member countries

90

International relations like Australia to provide peace-keeping forces in some international conflicts, these forces are often limited in their effectiveness. Just as political scientists have advanced competing theories to explain domestic politics, they have adopted various theories to understand international relations. The most influential theory of international relations is realism, which argues that individual states are the main actors in world politics. States, like individuals, are selfinterested and will seek to advance their interests against other states through military power, cooperating with other states only when it is in their interest to do so. Order emerges as a result of a balance of power between different states. Liberals dispute the contentions that each state has a single selfish interest and that order can only be found through power struggle. They argue that international cooperation is possible because different states have many shared interests and can find institutional mechanisms to regulate disputes and develop common approaches to problems. Neo-Marxist structuralists take a different approach, viewing global capitalism rather than state conflict or cooperation as the key to understanding international relations. For neo-Marxists, international politics is primarily played out in conflicts between economic classes rather than states. While these three theories dominate thinking on international relations, the study of international relations has become increasingly eclectic in recent years. A fourth theory, called constructivism, has emerged, which stresses the importance of norms, assumptions and identities in constructing the ways in which states view the world and interact with each other. Other newer theories draw on ideas such as feminism, environmentalism, community, identity politics, post-modernism and culture to explain international politics.

Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Australia in the World’, Chapter 6 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005, pp. 149–75.

Further reading James Cotton and John Ravenhill (eds), The National Interest in a Global Era: Australia in World Affairs 1996–2001, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001.

91

Internet Greg Fry and Jacinta O’Hagan (eds), Contending Images of World Politics, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000.

Internet The internet is the publicly accessible worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data using a standardised internet protocol. It is made up of thousands of smaller commercial, university, community and government networks. It carries a wide range of information and services, such as electronic mail (email), online chat, and the interlinked web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web. In a political sense, the internet can be analysed in terms of two distinctive roles: an information distribution role and a participation facilitation role. The information distribution role has become crucial, with many workplaces now using email to communicate among staff and websites to advertise their services. Most public sector agencies now have websites that provide information about their mission to the general public and give people access to government publications. Some government workplaces use the internet to recruit people to employment, advertise specific services and deliver official forms. Some analysts believe that the apparently unlimited information available through the internet fosters an increase in political knowledge, that people express their views freely on email, lists and in chat rooms, and consequently become more active in community politics. This view encapsulates the mobilisation thesis, which emphasises the internet’s capacity to engage those people currently on the periphery of the existing political systems, such as young people, those living in non-urban communities and those disillusioned with the political system. Other analysts, in contrast, argue that the internet reinforces the power of those citizens already active and knowledgeable about political and community affairs. They suggest that the internet will not change existing levels of participation, and could even widen the gap between the engaged and those who are marginalised by mainstream political processes. The internet does provide new ways of participating in political processes, and thus merits analysis. For example, the rapid

92

Internet uptake of mobile phones, digital television and the internet have all occurred in the last decade and have created opportunities for an increase in individualised political expression and participation. These individualised forms of participation include modes that are facilitated by new technology, including petition-signing, boycotts, blogging, chat rooms, email chain letters and SMS to media organisations, parties, parliamentarians and ministers. These modes of individualised political participation are often quicker and more convenient than traditional modes such as face-to-face meetings.

Introductory reading Trevor Barr, ‘The Internet and Online Communication’, in Stuart Cunningham and Graeme Turner (eds), The Media and Communications in Australia, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2002, pp. 244–57.

Further reading Graham Meikle, Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet, Sydney: Pluto Press, 2002. Pippa Norris, Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

93

Judiciary

Jj Judiciary (judicial)

The judiciary is a term used for the branch of government that interprets the law, adjudicates legal disputes and administers justice. The judiciary, made up of the judges who work within a system of courts of law, decides cases brought before it against the requirements of the statutes passed by parliament, the common law precedents set by previous court judgements and the constitution. These functions formally distinguish the judiciary from the parliament that makes laws and the executive that implements laws (see separation of powers). The most powerful Australian court is the High Court of Australia, which is the final court of appeal for legal disputes, including disputes that originate within a state. It comprises seven justices led by a Chief Justice. Most importantly from a political viewpoint, the High Court interprets the Australian Constitution and determines disputes that arise over the constitutionality of government activity, including the acts passed by parliament. In one example of this power, the High Court has used Chapter III of the Constitution to protect the separation of powers between courts with Commonwealth jurisdiction and the other arms of national government, preventing the Commonwealth parliament from setting up bodies other than properly established courts to exercise judicial functions. In one important respect, the separation of powers between the courts and the parliament and executive is not as clear-cut as it might first appear. The judiciary does make law. Judges make law where parliament has not yet passed an act covering a particular area of life. This judge-made law is usually called common law. It

94

Judiciary relies heavily on legal precedents; that is, the decisions of previous judges about identical or similar matters. Even so, the precedents may be unclear and the circumstances of a case may contain novel elements, meaning that judges have to exercise some creativity in arriving at their decisions. Should the parliament choose to do so, it can pass acts that supersede the common law, thus restricting the scope of judge-made law. Nevertheless, the judiciary still plays a role in making law through its interpretation of the acts of parliament and judgements about how they apply in particular circumstances. Judicial work thus inevitably involves some creation of law. Judges, including justices of the High Court, tend to claim that their work is not political, arguing that they deal only with the legal and not the political or social merits of the matters brought before them. Such professional self-perceptions do not stop judicial decisions from having political implications and might even be seen as a defence mechanism against accusations that judges are politically biased. In recent years, these accusations have become linked with accusations of judicial activism; that is, claims that the judiciary is legislating according to its own values, rather than focussing on the letter of the law. The decisions of the High Court have left a deep impression on Australian politics. Shifts in the High Court’s interpretation of the Constitution in areas such as federalism have radically changed the scope for Commonwealth government policy-making over time. Similarly, shifts in the Court’s common law interpretations have also had important policy effects in areas such as Indigenous land rights. Judges have adopted different approaches to interpreting the Constitution, including literal readings of the text, attempts to understand the intentions of the Constitution’s nineteenth-century authors, discovering the wider implications of the text, and measuring the text against current community values. The predominant approach taken by the High Court at any time has depended on the judicial appointments made by governments and the intellectual leadership of influential judges, especially the Chief Justices.

Introductory reading Ian Cook, ‘The Judiciary’, Chapter 3 in Government and Democracy in Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 33–46.

95

Judiciary Further reading Brian Galligan, Politics of the High Court, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1987. Haig Patapan, Judging Democracy: The New Politics of the High Court of Australia, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

96

Law

Ll Law (laws)

Law has a number of related meanings. In a political context, law most often refers to the rules made by governments. The law can refer to a single rule, the set of rules covering a particular domain (criminal law, for example), or the whole set of rules governing a group of people. In contemporary Australia, the law is made in two main ways. The first is by parliament passing acts, sometimes called legislation or statutes, which set out written rules governing a particular area of activity. The second is through decisions made by the judiciary in court cases, which contribute to what is usually called the common law. Within Australian federalism, the Commonwealth, state and territory parliaments and courts all make the law in these ways, while local governments make by-laws under the authority of state governments. Laws are not the only rules at work in contemporary Australian society and government is not the only rule-making body. Sports and games, for example, have rules. Clubs and associations exist to uphold them. There are also informal codes of social behaviour (mores or customs) that determine people’s behaviour because they have been brought up within a particular culture to view that behaviour as the right way of doing things. The difference between law and these other rules is that the law carries the authority of government and the promise of enforcement by the executive and judiciary. The social customs and rules of associations within a community often help shape the laws made by government; however, they only remain legal if they do not contradict those laws. The fact that laws are not always enforced by the executive does not mean that

97

Leadership they are not laws, although this fact has raised the question among some critics about whether Australian parliaments pass too much meaningless law. Australian commentators often express the positive view that the Australian government operates according to the rule of law. By this, they mean that the government does not act arbitrarily and is itself bound by laws, including those set out in the Constitution. Of course, such laws might be quite unjust. In Australia and other political systems influenced by liberalism, the rule of law often also incorporates the idea that individuals have certain rights, including equality before the law. Australian law-making, in the form of traditional Indigenous law administered by elders, goes back well beyond 1788 (see tradition). The British colonisation of Australia meant the suppression of Indigenous law by colonial governments. Recent developments have seen elements of Indigenous traditional law incorporated into parts of the Australian legal framework where Indigenous people are involved. This process has drawn criticism from some who argue, on grounds of equality, that all Australians should be governed by the same law.

Introductory reading Graham Maddox, ‘Government, Parliament and Judiciary’, Chapter 7 in Australian Democracy in Theory and Practice, fourth edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2000, pp. 200–68.

Further reading John Carvan, Understanding the Australian Legal System, fifth edition, Sydney: Lawbook Company, 2005. Prue Vines, Law and Justice in Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Leadership (leader, leaders)

Leadership is a commonly used but ambiguous term in Australian public life. In one usage, it simply refers to those who hold particular

98

Leadership offices at the head of organisations or groups such as ministries, political parties, public sector agencies and interest groups. The Prime Minister is a leader in this usage, as is the Leader of the Opposition. In another usage, it refers to particular behaviours and relationships between people, regardless of the formal offices these people hold. This second usage commonly identifies a leader as any individual, regardless of their formal office, who influences others to move towards a common goal. Leadership, in this sense, is the process through which individuals influence others towards a common goal. The tension between these two meanings of leadership is captured in the common complaint that Australia, along with other contemporary democracies, lacks true leaders and leadership. The death of leadership is often proclaimed. People who make these claims generally know that there are just as many, if not more, formal positions at the head of organisations as there were in the past. What they perceive is the absence of individuals capable of effectively motivating others to act towards a shared social or political vision. Underlying their complaints is an understanding that a formal leadership office does not equal leadership in its broader sense. Not every prime minister, premier or head of a public sector agency is a leader. Not every leader is a prime minister, premier, public sector head or the like. Leadership broadly understood clearly involves power; however, it is primarily associated with certain forms of power. These are authority, persuasion and inducement, where following is willing, rather than through force and coercion, where compliance is unwilling. The distinction can be hard to draw, since people who lead often also have both the capacity and need to coerce or force others to act in a desired way. This point is particularly true of government leaders, whose power can be expressed through laws enforced by police, immigration officials, social workers, teachers and others. Nonetheless, at the core of leadership lies influence over willing followers rather than imposition on resistant subordinates. Another important element in the way leadership is usually defined is its emphasis on movement and change. Leaders motivate people by identifying, communicating and gaining support for a long-term vision for change. This helps distinguish leadership from management, which centres on coping with complexity by imposing predictability, planning, structure and order. The two activities often

99

Leadership play complementary roles in political organisations and groups, but they are different. One paradox that arises from contemporary complaints about the lack of Australian political leadership is that these complaints are made at a time when the capacity for political figures to communicate visions and goals through the mass media has never been greater. This paradox might be explained by the equal capacity of the mass media to carry strong messages from the public to those in office, leaving individuals in Australian governments unable or unwilling to do other than follow public opinion. Critics also locate causes of the apparent lack of political leadership in structural forces other than public opinion, such as the unavoidable inheritance of public policies implemented by previous governments, gridlock caused by competing interest groups, the power of domestic class forces, and the constraints of globalisation. Although scholars have identified a wide range of effective leadership styles and approaches, much of the Australian public debate about leadership centres on whether or not individuals possess charisma. Often little more is meant by this than popularity or public satisfaction as measured by public opinion. Less superficially, charisma has come to define the essence of leadership for many people because it is associated with special individuals and exciting change. The search for charisma often centres on leadership outside organisational positions by activists in social movements whose words and deeds alone attract attention and support. In western democracies like Australia, this type of activist leadership perhaps best approximates what the German theorist Max Weber (1864–1920) had in mind by charismatic authority. Weber identified three forms of legitimate power: authority from handeddown ways of doing things (the traditional authority associated with monarchs), authority based on codified laws (the legal-rational authority associated with bureaucracy), and authority based on the exceptional gifts or powers of an individual (charismatic authority). Political orders governed by tradition or legal-rationality tend to be stable, so the main way they change is through the challenge of charismatic leaders who mobilise people during periods of uncertainty, before traditional or legal-rational authority re-emerges. Arguably, the dominance of traditional and legal-rational authority within

100

Liberalism Australian politics has limited the scope for truly charismatic leadership except at the political margins.

Introductory reading Brian Head, John Wanna and Paul Williams, ‘Leaders and the Leadership Challenge’, in John Wanna and Paul Williams (eds), Yes, Premier: Labor Leadership in the States and Territories, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005, pp. 253–64.

Further reading John Kane, The Politics of Moral Capital, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Graham Little, Strong Leadership: Thatcher, Reagan and an Eminent Person, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Liberalism

(liberal, liberals) All liberals are committed to providing the maximum freedom for individuals. The fact that different understandings of freedom are available, though, means that this short statement is only the starting point for an understanding of liberalism. Liberalism has been articulated at different times since the seventeenth century. The different historical circumstances in which it has been articulated affect the particular ways it emerges and the themes that dominate its articulation. Four forms of liberalism can be distinguished. These are classical liberalism, social liberalism (which has a number of different names), neo-liberalism and libertarianism. Classical liberalism was the first form to emerge. It did so in the days when monarchy (rule by kings and queens) was the dominant form of government. Classical liberalism emerged, primarily, among those who were developing a new intellectual pursuit, which they referred to as political economy. This self-description provides an important clue to the orientations and positions of classical liberals: that is, their primary concern with economic matters. They took the usual economist’s view that individuals were primarily concerned with the accumulation of material goods for themselves. If

101

Liberalism individuals weren’t selfish, for these liberals, they were undoubtedly acquisitive and competitive. These liberals argued that monarchs should allow markets to develop free from their interference and allow people to practise the religion of their choice, as long as this did not cause social conflict. Classical liberals justified market freedom in terms of the idea of the ‘invisible hand’, introduced by the Scottish political economist Adam Smith, in which each individual’s pursuit of her/his own goals resulted in economic development and the improvement of society. They argued for minimal government (sometimes called a laissez-faire or nightwatchman state). This approach to government was one in which government would play a very limited role in the economy. This form of liberalism is associated with the negative view of freedom, which is discussed under that entry. The next form of liberalism emerged in the nineteenth century and is referred to by a number of names. These include social liberalism, new liberalism, welfare liberalism and modern liberalism. All these names refer to those liberals who thought that classical liberals paid too little attention to the social conditions in which individuals found themselves. Two ideas were important for these liberals. First, they believed that people were deeply influenced by their social environment. In short, they argued that people’s upbringing and education were crucial to their life chances and that many of the inequalities that people experienced in society were a result of their different upbringing and education (see equality). They rejected the view that economic success was simply a reflection of individual effort and were deeply affected by social inequality. For them, the relationship between employer and employees was one in which economically and politically strong employers could exploit and otherwise diminish the life chances of economically and politically weak workers. These liberals promoted industrial legislation that evened out the power imbalance they believed existed in the workplace. The second important idea for these liberals was their differentiation between different types of pleasures. These liberals believe that people should be encouraged and enabled to enjoy the higher or better pleasures (such as those that derived from an appreciation of ideas, opera, ballet or art). Creating a society in which everyone truly

102

Liberalism had an equal chance in life and in which the higher pleasures were generally enjoyed necessitated significant government intervention in the economy (primarily through taxation) and in people’s home lives. The form of government that resulted is widely known as the welfare state. Neo-liberalism emerged, in many ways, as a response to the welfare state. While ‘neo’ means new or modern, this form of liberalism might be understood as a revival of classical liberalism. Neo-liberals committed themselves to returning to a minimal state by dismantling or winding back the welfare state (see economic rationalism). Much of their political agenda, then, was concerned with undoing what the social liberals had done. One difference between classical and neo-liberals is that neo-liberals have a greater capacity to pursue their agenda at an international level (that is, they want to create an international market that is free from any intervention by any government – see globalisation). They seek to remove government interference in the international economy by removing tariff protection and government subsidies and do so through organisations like the World Trade Organisation. Libertarians are those liberals who apply the principles of maximum freedom to the social sphere and not just the economic sphere. They have been around as long as there has been liberalism. Libertarians argue that people should be free to do what they want as long as they cause no harm to others (these actions are sometimes referred to as self-regarding). Libertarians, then, argue that any laws that prevent people from doing things that caused no one else harm are wrong and impede individual freedom. Laws against homosexuality and the use of recreational drugs are among those to which libertarians object. For most of the period since the late nineteenth century, Australian politics was dominated by social liberalism. From the 1980s, however, neo-liberalism has become increasingly influential and neo-liberal arguments now dominate political debates in Australia (see discourse). The term liberal is perhaps most associated in Australia with the Liberal Party, formed in 1944. The ideology of the Liberal Party has in fact always been a mixture of conservatism, social liberalism and classical or neo-liberalism. In line with the more general swing to neo-liberalism in Australian politics, over the

103

Liberalism past two decades the ideological balance within the Liberal Party has shifted towards neo-liberal ideas.

Introductory reading Andrew Norton, ‘Liberalism and the Liberal Party of Australia’, in Paul Boreham, Geoffrey Stokes and Richard Hall (eds), The Politics of Australian Society: Political Issues for the New Century, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2004, pp. 22–36.

Further reading Ian Cook, Liberalism in Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1999. Marian Sawer, The Ethical State? Social Liberalism in Australia, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2003.

104

Managerialism

Mm Managerialism Managerialism is a word often used in Australia and New Zealand since the late 1980s to describe a critique of traditional bureaucratic public sector organisation; this critique was coupled with an argument that the public sector ought to be organised to mimic business organisation and managed along business lines. These basic ideas are widely referred to internationally as the new public management. They overlap with the precepts of economic rationalism. Endemic problems of bureaucratic organisation, such as rigidity, stultifying hierarchy and a focus on following processes rather than achieving results, have been repeated ad nauseam since the early twentieth-century writings of the influential German theorist Max Weber. Rather than simply repeating these complaints, supporters of managerialism argue that business provides an alternative and better mode of organisation for the public sector. In this vein, future Liberal Premier Nick Greiner memorably described himself in the mid-1980s as wanting to be like the managing director of New South Wales Inc., out to get better returns for his shareholders. Under managerialism, public sector managers have become part of a senior executive service. They have lost their previous career tenure but gained performance-based contracts and increased salaries related to their market worth. Government ministers set objectives for public sector managers and the managers are then allowed freedom to pursue those objectives without political interference. ‘Let the managers manage’ is the mantra. Managers are given incentives for meeting policy objectives, in order to encourage them to ensure that their organisations are working towards specific agreed

105

Mandate and measurable outcomes. The achievement of those outcomes is monitored by external bodies. While managerialism has heavily influenced relationships within the core executive between agency heads and government ministers, as well as the wider culture of the Australian public sector, it has not always worked as intended and has produced its own pathologies or failings. Ministers have sometimes not been content to let the managers manage, and have intervened to exert their own control over public sector agencies. Managers have on occasion been removed for political reasons, rather than for failing to achieve the goals set for them. Public sector agencies sometimes abandon or downgrade programs that have valuable longer term and unmeasurable effects, in order to focus their efforts on meeting less valuable but measurable outcomes that are achievable within the short time allowed by managers for reporting results.

Introductory reading Chris Aulich, John Halligan and Sandra Nutley, ‘Public Sector Management’, in Chris Aulich, John Halligan and Sandra Nutley (eds), Australian Handbook of Public Sector Management, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001, pp. 9–19.

Further reading Chris Aulich, John Halligan and Sandra Nutley (eds), Australian Handbook of Public Sector Management, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001. Christopher Williams, ‘Frank and Fearless Leadership: Can It Survive in the “Reformed” Public Service?’, in Public Administration Today 3 (2005), pp. 18–27.

Mandate A mandate consists of a claim to the legitimacy of a government’s legislative actions because the governing party or coalition has won a majority of votes or seats at the preceding election. This claim usually carries the additional idea that the parties that lost the election have no right to obstruct government legislation. Sometimes this claim is made in a general way to claim the right of a winning party or coalition to be allowed to govern. It is sometimes claimed that

106

Mandate winning parties also have a specific mandate to implement a particular policy if they promised voters during the election campaign that they intended to pursue that policy. The idea of the mandate emerged in nineteenth-century Britain but gained its popularity in a later era when parties in Britain and other Westminster systems presented lists of detailed policies, sometimes called manifestos, to the voters during campaigns. Claiming a specific mandate for a policy is more controversial than claiming a general mandate, since it involves making contested assumptions about democracy and voting. A count of the votes or seats might tell us which party or coalition won the election, but it is far more difficult to argue with certainty that most voters supported a particular policy among the many policies advanced by the winning party during an election campaign. For some commentators, the fact that the people who voted for the winning party may not have supported a specific policy is irrelevant to the claim of a specific mandate. As long as the party indicated during the campaign that it was going to do something, it has a mandate to do it. Other commentators argue that a specific mandate can only be claimed in the unlikely circumstance that it can be shown that most voters actually knew about, and agreed with, a specific policy proposal announced during the campaign. Claims to a mandate are made both more complicated and more politically necessary by bicameral parliaments. Contested ideas about mandates have been most prominent in Australian political debate when the party or coalition that wins the lower house election fails to win control of the upper house and the parties with a majority in the upper house oppose the government’s policy program. In such situations, prime ministers and premiers lay claim to a mandate from the people to put pressure on the upper house to back down and pass their legislation. Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam took this approach in the 1970s, as did Liberal Prime Minister John Howard in the 1990s. Faced with such an appeal to a mandate, the non-government parties in the upper house can do one of three things. They can stick to their guns and claim that they have themselves been given a mandate by their supporters to oppose the government; they can make the sorts of arguments set out above to deny that the idea

107

Media of a government mandate should be taken seriously; or they can accept the idea of a government mandate and allow the government’s legislation to pass. Each of these paths is hard to stick to consistently, and political parties have moved from one position to another as their electoral and parliamentary circumstances have changed.

Introductory reading Marian Sawer, ‘Representing Trees, Acres, Voters and Non-Voters: Concepts of Parliamentary Representation in Australia’, in Marian Sawer and Gianni Zappala (eds), Speaking for the People, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001, pp. 48–51.

Further reading Murray Goot, ‘Whose Mandate? Policy Promises, Strong Bicameralism and Polled Opinion’, Australian Journal of Political Science 34 (1999), pp. 327–52. Richard Mulgan, ‘The “Mandate”: A Response to Goot’, Australian Journal of Political Science 35 (2000), pp. 327–52.

Media When people talk about the media they are usually referring to newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations and the articles and programs that they provide for readers, listeners and viewers. The media (and the articles and programs provided through them) is the channel through which entertaining and educational images and information are passed. There are other channels through which images and information can be passed (such as letters, newsletters or posters), so sometimes we refer to books, newspapers, radio, television and the internet as the mass media because they pass images and information to a large number of people. We can also divide newspapers, magazines, and radio and television programs according to whether or not they are being provided in order to make money. Those newspapers, magazines, and radio and television programs that are intended to generate a profit are referred to as the commercial media. The rest of the media includes public sector broadcasting provided by government, community-based media and, in the case of the internet, websites run by individuals.

108

Media Another way to divide the media is to distinguish between newspaper articles and radio and television programs that are intended to provide people with information about current local, national and world events and those that are simply intended to entertain. We refer to those articles and programs that provide information about current local, national and world events as the news media. The first point to note from the preceding discussion is that the media is a series of channels through which images and information pass. This is important because all channels have two sorts of limits. One relates to what can pass through them. The other to how much can pass through them. The limit with respect to what can pass through a channel means, in this context, that some images and information cannot be conveyed (or conveyed effectively) through a particular medium. Radio, of course, cannot carry pictures. Complicated graphs or tables are very hard to convey through television and are better suited to newspapers and magazines. The limits with respect to how much can be passed through a channel means, in this context, that someone must make a decision as to what will be passed through. Editors of newspapers and magazines have to decide which articles and columns will be included (and whether and which images will accompany them). Programmers for radio and television stations have to decide which programs they will air. The news media is the most important in the context of Australian politics because Australian voters acquire the information that affects their views on Australian politics, and especially their views concerning the Australian political parties, through the news media (see agenda setting). Understanding the news media in terms of the limits that constrain what passes through them is important for understanding the media. The fact that most Australians rely on television for most of their information about Australian politics is also important here. This reliance on television is significant because of the limits as to what television can carry. Television needs pictures. Events that produce good pictures are more likely to be aired on television. Looking and sounding ‘right’ on television has become essential to being a good politician (sounding good will also be useful for radio,

109

Ministerial adviser of course). Looking and sounding ‘right’ usually involves presenting simple ideas in effective ways. Making politics appear simple is undoubtedly an important skill, but this assumes that all political issues are simple. If they are not simple, then they have to be simplified, but simplification changes the nature of the issue. The limit as to how much can be carried by a medium is important simply because it means that some information about politics that could be communicated will not be. This intersects with the point made about television, in that information that cannot be accompanied by good pictures is more likely to be excluded than information that can. This limit is significant for two reasons. First, that the commercial media is the dominant media source may mean that the information conveyed through the media is biased in favour of business interests. Second, the ‘free-to-air’ commercial news media, which has to attract audiences to maximise its revenue from advertisers, is likely to be conservative (so as not to offend any viewers). The concentration of media ownership is another important issue in any discussion of the media in Australia. The late Kerry Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting Limited and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation dominate the Australian media. The effect of this dominance, particularly in light of criticisms of the Murdoch-owned US Fox Network’s news reporting, troubles many Australians because of the narrowness of views presented and its overt political bias.

Introductory reading Ian Cook, ‘The News Media’, Chapter 10 in Government and Democracy in Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 161–81.

Further reading Michael O’Shaugnessy and Jane Stadler, Media and Society: An Introduction, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002. Ian Ward, Politics of the Media, Melbourne: Macmillan, 1995.

Ministerial adviser (ministerial advisers)

Ministerial advisers, sometimes called ‘ministerial minders’ or ‘staffers’, are people employed to assist government ministers carry

110

Ministerial adviser out their duties as members of the executive. They work in ministers’ offices with a range of other staff, including media officers, departmental liaison officers and administrative staff. Ministerial advisers now play a range of key roles in the core executive, including policy development, gate-keeping between ministers and their public sector agencies, and liaison between ministers with related portfolio responsibilities. The numbers of ministerial advisers, along with their roles and importance, have grown since the 1970s. Until the Whitlam government, ministers relied largely on public servants who were seconded to staff ministerial offices. The Whitlam government began the current trend of bringing in academics, research officers, lawyers, political activists, party members and others from outside the public service to act as ministerial advisers. The growth of ministerial advisers has been driven partly by the desire of governments to assert their dominance over the public sector and partly as a response to the ongoing growth in government activity. Ministerial advisers can provide alternative policy advice to that offered by the public service and can take responsibility for monitoring the implementation of government policy by the bureaucracy. Advisers reduce the heavy workload of the ministry by accomplishing tasks that ministers would otherwise have to complete themselves. The growth of ministerial advisers has raised several concerns. One is the suspicion that ministerial advisers sometimes serve partisan ends rather than contributing to better government. This suspicion is fuelled by the employment of party members as advisers, although most advisers, at least at the Commonwealth level, are not drawn directly from the governing parties. Another controversy has to do with the possibility that ministerial advisers have significant independence from ministers in their dealings with other members of the ministers’ staff and with the public sector. Such independence would undermine one of the objectives of establishing ministerial advisory staff, which was to empower ministers. This potential for independent action also raises issues of accountability and responsibility. Public servants can be held accountable to parliament and ministers are responsible to parliament for their actions. The standards and mechanisms of accountability for ministerial advisers are less clear. Advisers carry out a range of roles with

111

Ministry little formal guidance. Ministers have resisted attempts by parliamentary committees to force their advisers to give evidence to those committees, arguing that advisers are accountable to their ministers and not to parliament. The issues of whether regulations or a code of conduct should be established to cover the activities of ministerial advisers and whether they should be required to appear if called before parliamentary committees are currently hotly debated in Australian political circles.

Introductory reading Maria Maley, ‘The Growing Role of Australian Ministerial Advisers’, Canberra Bulletin of Public Administration 110 (2003), pp. 1–4.

Further reading Ian Holland, Accountability of Ministerial Staff?, Canberra: Department of the Parliamentary Library, Research Paper No 19, 2001–02. Maria Maley, ‘Conceptualising Advisers’ Policy Work: The Distinctive Policy Roles of Ministerial Advisers in the Keating Government 1991– 1996’, Australian Journal of Political Science 35 (2000), pp. 449–70.

Ministry

(minister, ministerial, ministers, ministries) The ministry usually refers to the membership of the elected executive; that is, the group of parliamentarians chosen to form the government of the day and set the direction of public policy. Each of the individual parliamentarians who collectively form the ministry is called a minister. Ministries are headed at the Commonwealth level by a prime minister, in the states by a premier and in the two territories by a chief minister. Ministries take the name of the prime minister who leads them; for example, the Howard ministry and the Keating ministry. In this sense, the terms ministry and government are often used interchangeably. Each new ministry formed by a prime minister is numbered, so that John Howard’s ministry formed after the 2004 federal election was the fourth Howard ministry and the fifty-sixth since 1901. Although the personnel who make up a ministry may change

112

Ministry over time, only a change of prime minister or an election initiates a new ministry. Ministers are formally commissioned by the Governor-General (or the Governor at state level), making them ministers of the Crown; however, in practice they are chosen by the party or coalition of parties that has majority support in the lower house of parliament. Liberal prime ministers select their ministries, while Labor ministries are elected by the Parliamentary Labor Party (called the Caucus). Each minister usually has responsibility for one or more portfolios, meaning specific areas of policy and the public sector agencies responsible for delivering them (health, defence, agriculture and so on), although some have a more general trouble-shooting role as ‘ministers without portfolio’ or ‘special ministers of state’. The major party or coalition that is not in government forms a shadow ministry. Shadow ministers are usually given portfolio titles (such as the shadow minister for health) and are required to develop expertise in particular policy areas and to scrutinise and criticise their counterparts in the government. Australia inherited the position of ministers from British Westminster practice. In the seventeenth century, ministers met in a cabinet, meaning a private room, with the king. Later, the monarch’s role diminished as the ministry became primarily responsible to parliament. As collective terms for Australian ministers, cabinet and the ministry were interchangeable until 1956, when Liberal Prime Minister Robert Menzies divided his ministry. He kept a small group of senior ministers with the most important portfolios in his cabinet, leaving another group of junior ministers in an outer ministry. On the Labor side, Prime Minister Bob Hawke followed suit in 1983. A third and growing group of parliamentarians, called parliamentary secretaries, assists ministers with their portfolios. Although not strictly ministers, parliamentary secretaries appear in official ministry lists and are expected to abide by the conventions of ministerial responsibility. Junior ministers and parliamentary secretaries are only rarely co-opted to cabinet meetings to present policy proposals. Cabinet is the most powerful political group in Australia, meeting weekly to decide policy directions for the government. The prime minister is often referred to as the ‘first among equals’ (or ‘primus inter pares’) in the cabinet. Prime ministers possess a range

113

Multiculturalism of resources that allow them to exercise power over their cabinet colleagues. They chair cabinet meetings, set the agenda for cabinet meetings, and often determine what cabinet has decided from the mood of the meeting rather than a formal vote. Nonetheless, prime ministers are not invulnerable, and require the support of their cabinet colleagues to retain their positions. The power of the ministry, and particularly of cabinet, has raised serious questions about whether or not the parliament is able to exercise its expected role of enforcing executive accountability. These questions became particularly pertinent after 1 July 2005, when the Liberal and National parties, from which the Howard ministry was drawn, gained control of the Senate as well as the House of Representatives.

Introductory reading Gwynneth Singleton, Don Aitkin, Brian Jinks and John Warhurst, ‘Executive Government – Cabinet and Prime Minister’, Chapter 5 in Australian Political Institutions, seventh edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2003, pp. 155–91.

Further reading The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Cabinet Handbook, fifth edition, Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2004. Patrick Weller (ed.), Menzies to Keating: The Development of the Australian Prime Ministership, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992.

Multiculturalism (multicultural)

Multiculturalism is used in two main ways in Australian political discourse. The first is as a term to describe societies or countries, such as Australia, that contain people from a range of ethnic groups or backgrounds. The second describes an ideology or public policy framework that promotes equal treatment of different ethnic groups and their cultures and equality of opportunity for individuals regardless of their ethnicity. Obviously, without multiculturalism in the first sense, multiculturalism in the second sense would not be

114

Multiculturalism possible. Equally, the existence of multiple ethnic groups within a society like Australia’s does not guarantee that multicultural ideology and policies will prevail. Nor does the adoption of multiculturalism as a guiding principle resolve debates about the type of equality that different individuals and ethnic groups should be granted or what level of government intervention is required to achieve this goal. Prior to the 1970s, Australian policies had been based on the assumption that regardless of their original cultures, immigrants would gradually be assimilated or integrated into the dominant Anglo-Celtic monoculture, dropping their languages in favour of English and aligning their practices to fit Australian norms. The Whitlam Labor government recognised that this approach had disadvantaged minority ethnic groups and their members. It borrowed the term multiculturalism from Canada and introduced some multicultural programs. These were modified and extended by Malcolm Fraser’s Coalition government, which among other things introduced publicly funded broadcasting in diverse community languages. This bipartisan support for multiculturalism was partly driven by a desire to capture the support of minority ethnic voters. The Hawke Labor government attempted to clarify the scope of multicultural policy around three themes: rights to cultural identity, including language and religion; social justice, including equal treatment and opportunity for individuals; and economic efficiency, to maximise the use of all Australians’ skills. Although Prime Minister John Howard has avoided using the word multiculturalism and has expressed support for the integration of migrants into Australian society, he has also supported the right of migrants to preserve their ethnic identities and cultures. Under his government, multicultural policies, by one name or another, have continued. John Howard has not been the only political figure uneasy about the term multiculturalism. Although the equality granted to different ethnic cultures under Australian policies is limited (for example, by English remaining Australia’s sole official language and by the expectation of support for Australian democratic values within all ethnic communities), some critics argue that by pursuing multiculturalism, governments have fragmented a once-shared sense of Australian community and citizenship and have allowed undesirable minority

115

Multiculturalism values and behaviours to flourish. Other critics argue that Australian multiculturalism has not gone far enough, and is limited to superficial appreciation of different communities’ music, food and crafts, while governments have ignored deeper economic, social and political inequalities between minority ethnic groups and the Anglo-Celtic majority.

Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Immigration’, Chapter 10 in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 224–51.

Further reading Stephen Castles, Mary Kalantzis, Bill Cope and Michael Morrissey, Mistaken Identity: Multiculturalism and the Demise of Nationalism in Australia, Sydney: Pluto Press, 1992. James Jupp (ed.), The Australian People, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

116

National identity

Nn National identity

(nation, nationalism, nationalities, nationality, nations) National identity can be best understood in the context of two phenomena. One of these contexts is the emergence of nations; the other is the need on the part of most people to belong to a community. The emergence of nations is significant because it often meant that groups of people with little in common were contained within particular national borders. Most people’s need to belong is significant because identifying with a nation can satisfy this need. While most of us are so used to living in a nation that we can’t imagine living any other way, nations have not always existed. Some people argue that the idea of boundaries necessary for the emergence of nations first emerged with the Peace of Westphalia, and this seems as good a place to start this discussion as any other does. The Peace of Westphalia involved a series of treaties between the King of France and his allies and the Holy Roman Emperor and his allies in 1648. The Peace of Westphalia marked the end of the Thirty Years’ War, and the Peace of Westphalia is sometimes referred to as the Peace of Exhaustion. The crucial point to note about these treaties is that they involved the drawing up of maps to identify which territory belonged to which monarch. This is important because it meant that the territories created by these treaties were artificial impositions that did not always reflect what people wanted or thought about themselves. The overthrow of monarchies, particularly in the French revolution of 1789, created a need for another basis by which people within a territory could construct a common loyalty. This is found in ideas of the nation.

117

National identity This is the point at which most people’s need to belong becomes important, particularly for those in positions of political power. For the job of those who govern a nation is made much harder if their nation is divided along ethnic or other cultural lines. While force is often used to control internal division, using most people’s need to belong is another strategy to achieve this goal. Most people feel a need to be part of a group simply because it helps them to survive. To belong to a group, though, is something more than this. Belonging involves identifying with that group. It involves developing a sense of ‘we’ or ‘us’; or a sense of what makes ‘us’ different from ‘them’. This ‘us’ could be a class, a religious group or a nation and it is the latter that allows for something called national identity. For Australians, having a sense of national identity means having a sense of what it is to be Australian (or a true, ordinary or mainstream Australian). A number of different things are likely to go towards developing a sense of what it is to be an Australian. Apart from lamingtons, pavlova and meat pies, Australian food is yet to emerge as an important part of who we are (that is, we don’t define ourselves in terms of what we eat). Nor do we have a national costume that is ‘ours’. Being an Australian is more about our values and beliefs. While national identity reflects most people’s need to belong, its political effects are of particular interest here. For in order to use national identity as a political tool, leaders seek to define and redefine national identity (see also populism). In order to gain support, especially during elections, they present themselves as being the people who truly represent that national identity. Elections are sometimes contests over Australian identity and more often contests as to which party really represents the true, ordinary or mainstream Australian. In Australia, the pioneer, the bushman, the Anzac and the lifeguard have been presented as figures who define our national identity. A commitment to a ‘fair go’ and mateship (which are manifestations of egalitarianism) are also presented as part of the Australian national identity. Beaches, barbecues and the ‘bush’ are places in which Australians express their national identity. An obsession with sport might also be included as part of Australian national identity.

118

National identity The most important thing to note about national identity is that it privileges (or gives priority to) a particular set of values and delegitimises others. The values and beliefs of Indigenous Australians, women and Australians from non-English-speaking backgrounds play little role in Australian national identity. So while we can see national identity as a reflection of a widespread need to belong, it has important social and political effects that mean that it needs to be approached carefully.

Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Nation’, Chapter 4 in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 72–95.

Further reading John Docker and Gerhard Fischer (eds), Race, Colour and Identity in Australia and New Zealand, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2000. Anthony Moran, Australia: Nation, Belonging and Globalization, New York: Routledge, 2005.

119

Obligation

Oo Obligation (obligations)

To have an obligation is to be bound to undertake some action as a result of a law, contract, promise, agreement or duty. Almost all people, apart from radical libertarians, recognise that some kinds of obligations to others are important; however, the nature of those obligations and the extent to which obligations should be central to understanding politics are matters of great debate. Conservatives tend to make obligations between people, often expressed as duties or responsibilities owed to others, central to their understanding of how politics and society ought to work. By contrast, liberals tend to focus on rights rather than obligations as the basis for political and social interactions. Socialists and social democrats have also tended to play down obligations, although recent ‘third way’ social democratic thinking has stressed obligation. Australian political debates about obligations have often focussed on the obligations that society or the government can legitimately demand of citizens and the circumstances in which citizens can claim a right and even an obligation to disobey government laws. Are Australians obliged to obey all laws, or can they legitimately appeal to social, ethical or religious obligations in order to disobey some laws? These questions have arisen in contexts such as government conscription of young Australian men to fight in the Vietnam War, citizen participation in unlawful protest actions, and the leaking of confidential government documents by public servants. In international relations, similar questions have arisen about whether Australia has an obligation to abide by international laws and treaties

120

Obligation when they conflict with the values and interests of the Australian government. The language of obligation has become prominent in some recent domestic Australian public policy debates. In welfare policy, governments have increasingly replaced the principle of a right to government support in time of need with a principle of ‘mutual obligation’, in which individuals or communities have to meet certain expectations to continue receiving government payments or services. Probably the best-known policy program to be based on mutual obligation is the Howard government’s ‘work for the dole’ scheme, in which people aged 18 to 49 who have been unemployed for more than six months are obliged to undertake work activities in order to continue receiving a benefit and to gain access to job training and support. Other well-known and contentious mutual obligation programs include the ‘shared responsibility agreement’ between an Indigenous community in Western Australia and the Commonwealth government, in which the community agreed to maintain levels of hygiene in return for easier access to fuel. Critics of mutual obligation schemes include liberals who argue that citizens have a right to the services that governments have made conditional on particular behaviour. Critics often point to the double standard of applying mutual obligation to one social group, such as Indigenous Australians, and not others. Perhaps more intriguingly, some conservatives criticise some mutual obligation programs for being forms of social engineering, in which the government rewards people for engaging in activities that they should be doing as part of their natural social responsibilities, such as caring for their children. Obligation has also become a contentious issue in the recent debates about economic rationalism. As a condition of privatising utilities, governments often impose service obligations that bind the new private owners of these utilities to maintain particular levels of provision. The governments’ purpose in establishing these obligations is partly to appease community groups that feel they will be worse off with a privatised service. The new managers of the privatised utilities sometimes resist these conditions, arguing that service obligations interfere with their businesses’ abilities to make reasonable profits, expand their businesses and keep up with

121

Other changing technologies. A current example involves the Howard government’s imposition of a universal service obligation on the Australian telecommunications provider Telstra. As a condition of its full privatisation, Telstra is obliged to provide equitable access to telecommunications services for people living in metropolitan and regional areas. This may involve upgrading Telstra’s current service levels in regional Australia. Telstra’s management has resisted the imposition of this universal service obligation, arguing that the company cannot sustain its cost in the long term.

Introductory reading Helen Pringle, ‘The Nature of Politics’, in Rodney Smith (ed.), Politics in Australia, third edition, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997, pp. 3–16.

Further reading Alison McClelland, ‘Mutual Obligation and the Welfare Responsibilities of Government’, Australian Journal of Social Issues 37 (2002), pp. 209–24. Noel Pearson, ‘Rebuilding Indigenous Communities’, in Peter Botsman and Mark Latham (eds), The Enabling State, Sydney: Pluto, 2001, pp. 132–47.

Other

(otherness, others) The concept of the other derives from a particular way of understanding the world. It mainly features in post-modern theories of identity and difference. A distinction between others and the other needs to be made before some explanation of ‘other’ can be provided. We encounter others almost every day of our lives and might not think too much about this. To understand ‘other’, though, we need to think of all of these others as belonging to a particular category. Others, then, all represent the other (some writers capitalise the term, i.e. the Other, to designate this category). This entry is an attempt to explain this idea of the other. To understand others requires focussing on the self, because the basic opposition that applies in this context is between self and other. When individuals think about themselves they have to recognise that

122

Other knowing themselves is completely different from knowing someone else. Individuals sense their bodies and emotions, experience their ideas directly, or much more directly, than they sense other people’s bodies and emotions, and experience those other people’s ideas. The fundamental differences between the way that individuals understand themselves and the way that they understand others means that they are always at a distance from others; or putting it another way, individuals experience themselves directly but have to interpret other people according to the visual and verbal cues that those other people provide. This idea of being at a distance has been referred to as an existential vacuum (in which there is always a gap, or empty space, between an individual and everyone else – even their families, best friends and lovers). An awareness of the other is important because it means that people can’t take their own view and understanding of the world as true (see also difference). The other represents a form of being that differs from their own. The other may also represent a different way of understanding the world and a different understanding of the importance of things. The separation between self and other and an inability to know the other can make the other into a somewhat troubling being. For example, an Anglo-Celtic, Protestant man may recognise otherness in an Arabic, Muslim woman and find this otherness troubling. For the existence, and more importantly presence, of the other is clear evidence that an individual’s values and way of understanding the world are not the only ones available. Two political implications of any recognition of the other seem important. The first is a tendency for the other to become a threatening other. The second concerns the possibility of community and the possibilities for political community. Crucial to both, but more important in the latter, is the individual’s ability to imagine how the difference between self and other can be overcome, at least to the point that something like a coherent and cooperative group, or community, can form. The inability to know the other means not only that individuals always find themselves alone (no matter how many people are around them). It also means that individuals may feel vulnerable to the actions of an other who cannot know and has no obvious reason to respect them. Individuals are just as hidden to others as others

123

Other are hidden to them. At best, individuals may be able to distinguish others who are more like them and others who are less like them. A possible result of this is that individuals constitute the categories of friends (people who act and speak like them) and enemies (people who do not act and speak like them and who, as a result, have no ability to respect them). Individuals might be able to overcome some of the negative consequences of the separation between self and other in terms of this ‘like me’ view of the other and must do so in order to live in society. This social accommodation is different from community, however, which involves a deeper connection between people. This sense of otherness limits the capacity of politics to be more than a process by which a set of others manage their difference.

Introductory reading Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedwick, Key Concepts in Cultural Theory, London: Routledge, 1999, p. 266.

Further reading Edward Said, Orientalism, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996. Iris Marion Young, ‘Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy’, in Seyla Benhabib (ed.), Democracy and Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 120–36.

124

Parliament

Pp Parliament

(parliamentarian, parliamentarians, parliamentary, parliaments) In a formal sense, parliament is the arm of government that debates and makes law, distinguished from the executive that implements the law and the judiciary that interprets the law and judges actions against its requirements (see separation of powers). Parliament is a group of people who meet in a particular place called a parliament house and who are recognised as having the authority to make laws according to a particular set of rules and procedures. In Australia, political commentators and the wider public view parliament ambiguously. It is often seen as the centre-point of Australian politics, a centrality that is reflected in the common description of Australia as a ‘parliamentary democracy’. At the same time, many Australians disparage parliament as a useless ‘talking shop’ dominated by party politics, or a ‘rubber stamp’ for the policies of the executive. The form that parliaments take and the way that parliamentarians are given authority to make laws both vary considerably across political systems. Australian parliaments, for example, are not sovereign in the way that the British parliament is, since their powers are restricted by constitutional provisions and their legislation may be found to be invalid by the judiciary. Australians commonly assume that a parliament must be democratic, in the sense that parliamentarians are directly elected by the people and represent them in parliamentary decision-making. This assumption is quite a recent one. Parliaments predate both popular elections and the triumph of the idea that democracy is a good thing. The first Australian colonial parliaments were not

125

Parliament recognisably democratic. When the colonies allowed almost all men to vote for the new lower houses of parliament from the mid-1850s, they retained upper houses appointed by the governor or based on election by property owners. Only since the late 1970s has every Australian house of parliament been directly elected by the full adult electorate. Most Australian parliaments are bicameral; that is, they have two houses. (The unicameral exceptions are the parliaments of Queensland and the two territories.) The formal names of these houses vary but they are often colloquially called the lower and upper houses. Bicameralism partly reflects the idea that popular representation should not be the only principle for choosing parliamentarians. The lower house of the Australian parliament, the House of Representatives, for example, is based on the idea of popular representation achieved by dividing Australia into geographic areas, which each contain roughly equal numbers of voters. The upper house, the Senate, is based on the federalist principle that each state, regardless of its population, should have the same number of representatives. While Australian lower houses are seen as the houses of government, Australian upper houses have almost the same powers as lower houses. One key indication of these more or less equal powers is that both houses must agree to the legislative proposals set out in a bill before it becomes law as an act of parliament. Deadlocks between the houses, in which they cannot agree on whether a bill should be passed or what form it should take, are resolved only through complicated and time-consuming procedures. The main differences in the powers of Australian lower and upper houses have to do with their relationship to the executive. Under Australian notions of responsible government, an executive or ministry must keep the support of a majority in the lower house to remain in office. The support of the upper house is not as critical. The money bills, or supply, required by the executive to carry out government activities can only be introduced in the lower house and upper houses are limited in their powers to have these bills amended. As the 1975 constitutional crisis showed, however, an upper house determined to do so can make life extremely difficult for an executive. The quality of parliamentary standards, debate and other work is often depicted as being in terminal decline. Against this, a number

126

Participation of academic commentators have pointed to the growth since the 1980s of parliamentary committee work and other activity that has checked the power of executives and resulted in considerable amendment to legislation. This activity has been concentrated in upper houses, where the party that forms the executive has typically not had a majority of members. The control of the Senate by the governing Coalition parties from July 2005 was thus viewed by many commentators as a development likely to reduce the effectiveness of the Australian parliament.

Introductory reading Ian Cook, ‘The Legislature’, Chapter 1 in Government and Democracy in Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 6–18.

Further reading Stanley Bach, Platypus and Parliament, Canberra: Department of the Senate, Parliament House, 2003. John Uhr, Deliberative Democracy in Australia: The Changing Place of Parliament, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Participation

(participants, participate, participated, participating, participatory) Political participation is conceptualised in three main ways. First, as individual, institutionalised acts that people do by themselves to try to influence political outcomes. Second, participation is a type of group or collectively based action that can influence government or general public opinion. Third, participation is something governments might foster by overtly including people and groups within public policy-making processes. Individualised forms of participation include signing petitions, boycotting products, writing letters and donating money. People can participate in these ways without an institutional or group structure and increasingly can do so within their own homes, such as by signing an online internet petition. Participation as collective action is activity undertaken with others, in a formal or informal group structure, to achieve a shared goal or interest, often for the achievement

127

Participation of social and political change. This can be through activities such as joining local community groups, a political party, an environment group or attending a protest. Overall, Australians are more likely to participate in communityoriented activities and join groups that relate to their everyday lives, and are less interested in participating in formal political institutions such as political parties. Australians tend to see politicians as distant from their lives. Politicians are often not the first port of call in finding solutions to issues and problems. Australians are more likely to write a letter to the newspaper than to their local member of parliament. Compared to other liberal democracies, Australians have the highest rate of petition-signing and one of the highest rates of joining in a product boycott (see also democracy). Clearly these two types of action are very individualised and do not really indicate a high propensity towards other political activism within a political culture. Attendance at a demonstration, which involves an individual choice to participate but is also a collective action, gives another indication of the nature of Australian political culture and the sorts of political actions citizens may believe are effective. Compared to other liberal democracies, Australians are below the average in attendance at demonstrations. Countries which have a very different political culture and political tradition to Australia – such as France, Italy and Germany – have much higher rates of participation in demonstrations. Participation also occurs when people are involved in consultation processes as part of government decision-making. Consultation involves governments listening to views and taking them into account when making public policy decisions. Consultation assumes that there needs to be some kind of exchange between the government and the public, but also that the government has the power to make the final, binding decision. Australian governments have had an increasing focus on integrating participation strategies into public policy-making to try to enhance the trust and confidence people have in governments and their policies. Government does not lose its power to make the final decision in this consultative process. However, there is a degree of reciprocity because government acknowledges that those being consulted and allowed to participate have some influence and can change the direction of policy.

128

Party The dilemma for groups that choose to participate in consultation processes is that governments will co-opt them into giving public support for positions that those groups and their members do not really support.

Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Participation and Opinion’, Chapter 10 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005, pp. 283–312.

Further reading Patrick Bishop and Glyn Davis, ‘Developing Consent: Consultation, Participation and Governance’, in Glyn Davis and Patrick Weller (eds), Are You Being Served? State, Citizens and Governance, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001, pp. 175–95. John Wiseman, ‘Broadening and Deepening Democracy: Learning from Recent Experiments in Citizen and Community Engagement’, in Glenn Patmore (ed.), The Vocal Citizen, Melbourne: Arena, 2004, pp. 54–69.

Party

(parties) A political party is a political organisation that subscribes to a certain ideology, or represents a particular set of interests or values, and tries to exercise political power by gaining public office. A party’s policies tend to represent an aggregation of different interests within the party, as party members will often have different viewpoints. In parliamentary systems like Australia’s, political parties have elected leaders who become the head of government if their party wins an election. A government may be formed by more than one party, in which case it is called a coalition government. In Australia, the main coalition is a long-standing and formally negotiated one between the Liberal Party and the National Party. These parties have governed together at the Commonwealth level for most of the past hundred years, including the period since 1996. Australia is often referred to as a two-party system. This means that government ministries at the Commonwealth, state and territory levels have historically been formed by one of two party blocs:

129

Party the Liberal–National Coalition or the Labor Party. Other twoparty systems include the United States of America and the United Kingdom. This system is contrasted with multi-party systems in which coalition governments made up of a number of parties are the norm. These include New Zealand since 1996 and most continental European countries. Other parties, usually called minor parties, have been elected to Australian parliaments, particularly in upper houses, such as the Senate, and the lower house in Tasmania – these houses use proportional representation systems of voting similar to those used in continental Europe. Significant minor parties include the Australian Greens and the Australian Democrats. Independent representatives, who do not represent a party, have also won seats in the lower houses of parliaments where their high profiles in local communities has gained them more votes than the major party candidates. In 2005, there were three Independent members out of the 150 members of the House of Representatives. The major parties have traditionally been described as representing distinctive sections or classes within Australian society. The Liberal Party has been seen to represent the middle and upper classes, the Labor Party the working class, and the National Party rural producers. These cleavages are not clear-cut and have been affected by the changing nature of Australian society. These changes include increased immigration and education levels and declines in the number of blue collar working class employees and people living in rural Australia. The major parties have tried to retain their original voter base, while at the same time trying to make in-roads into the constituency of their opponents. For example, from the late 1960s the Labor Party tried to generate support among public sector workers who were predominantly professional and tertiary educated ‘white collar’ workers. Partisanship is a term used to describe the tendency of supporters of political parties to identify with a party and support that party’s views and policies in contrast to those of other parties. The term can also be used pejoratively in accusing people of acting in a manner biased to one or other party. It can also be used to label an announcement or decision as having bipartisan support, meaning that it has the support of both major party blocs.

130

Party Political parties are structured around three organisational ‘faces’. These are the party on the ground, or the members; the party in central office, or the officials; and the party in public office, or the members of parliament. The organisational dimensions of Australian political parties are broadly similar in that all, except the Australian Democrats, are based around state structures. The national organisation often acts as the peak for this federalist structure. Financial matters and preselection of candidates to represent the party at elections are still dealt with at the state level for most parties, and state divisions often have distinctive processes and rules. Increasingly, in most political parties the members of parliament assert power in the party structure over policy-making. Party organisations are also often characterised as having factions that members join and support on preselection and policy-making decisions. For example, the Labor Party is described as having three main factions: the right, centre and left factions. The Liberal Party is described as having a ‘wet’ social liberal faction and a ‘dry’ economic rationalist faction. The formation of factions is underpinned by both personalities and ideology. The ascendancy of particular factions within parties changes over time and differs from state to state. Political parties in Australia are changing as representative forms. Once they were associated with socio-economic cleavages in society and the need for different groups of people, with different needs and aspirations, to be represented in parliament. Now they have become centralised organisations, highly skilled in the policy language, campaigning techniques and fund-raising needed to win elections. Analysts have charted similar electoral and organisational changes in political parties in other democratic countries.

Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Political Parties’, Chapter 8 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005, pp. 211–46.

Further reading Simon Jackman, ‘Political Parties and Electoral Behaviour’, in Ian McAllister, Steve Dowrick and Riaz Hassan (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of

131

Policy Social Sciences in Australia, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 266–86. Ian Marsh (ed.), Political Parties in Transition, Sydney: Federation Press, 2006.

Policy (policies)

There are at least two ways in which the word policy is used when talking about politics. One way is to refer to the general objectives being pursued by a government or by a particular agency or department within the bureaucracy. We might speak of a government seeking to promote saving among members of the community as a policy. We might refer to those in a public sector agency responsible for education seeking to increase practical or vocationally oriented skills among school and university leavers as adopting a policy. The other way to use the word policy is to refer to a specific program introduced by a government or agency. This use of policy derives from the first, in that the larger objectives of a government or government department will result in specific programs designed to achieve a general outcome. This program may be comprised of legislation, regulations and directions given to decision-makers within a government department. We might speak of a government’s higher education policy and mean the levels of funding provided to support teaching and research within universities, support for students, and approaches to student unionism. We might speak of an agency implementing a policy and mean its implementing a program for drought-relief or immigration control. At the base of policy lie values. The outcomes that are deemed desirable by those in government will be determined largely by their values. The White Australia Policy was a result of a view about the sort of society Australia should be. The Immigration Restriction Act and the way that it was implemented by those officials responsible for it gave life to this policy. This point brings to mind a distinction that has been made between policy-making and policy implementation. In this

132

Introductory reading distinction, those in the core executive (in Westminster systems, the ministry) decide on, or make, policy. Bureaucrats in the relevant agency or agencies are responsible for implementing this policy. This distinction, while useful, denies the role of senior bureaucrats in forming policy and those at lower levels in shaping policy by implementing it. In the context of politics, policy is often used as a synonym for public policy. Public policy is what governments and departments do or try to do. It might be called public for a number of reasons. It might be public because of its capacity to affect a significant number of people. It might be public because public money (money raised by government) is used. It might be public because it is determined by people in public office (those who are elected or who are responsible to those who are elected by the people). Public policy is also a field of study. Students might study public policy (sometimes public administration) or comparative public policy. In both cases, of course, they study what governments do (though this might mean the actual programs they introduce or the outcomes being sought), but sometimes they study how they generate and change policy (processes for evaluating the effects of a policy and adjusting that policy). Those who study government policy (policy analysts) analyse policy in terms of its outcomes and in terms of the processes through which it was generated. Governmental and departmental or agency policy is usually generated from a process of interaction between policy makers (those who have ultimate responsibility for outcomes) and people and interest groups. Higher education policy, for example, is generated in light of demands made by those involved in education and, more importantly, input from those who have expertise in this field. Groups of individuals (referred to as policy networks or policy communities) form around particular policy areas. This can give rise to the view that policy elites determine policy and not the people.

Introductory reading Martin Laffin, ‘Public Policy-Making’, in Rodney Smith (ed.), Politics in Australia, third edition, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997, pp. 51–66.

133

Political socialisation Further reading Glyn Davis and Peter Bridgman, Australian Policy Handbook, third edition, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003. Micheal Howlett and M. Ramesh, Studying Public Policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Political socialisation Political socialisation refers to a process that individuals go through that introduces them to belief structures and a knowledge base about politics. Political socialisation goes well beyond factual learning about political institutions and processes. It is value laden and shapes how individuals interpret information about politics and subsequently engage with the political world. Social learning theories of political behaviour emphasise the political socialisation that citizens go through by focussing on the beliefs and feelings about politics that they accumulate in childhood. Early socialisation studies in the 1960s argued that this pre-adult socialisation had important consequences for adult political values, in that support for the political system that was learnt through childhood would be sustained throughout an individual’s life. Clearly knowledge and attitudes towards and about politics are not just there when we are born. They are learnt and shaped by agents in society including: family and friends, educational institutions such as school and university, the media and the internet, workplaces, political and community groups and religious groups. Socialisation proceeds in ways that are both direct and indirect. The agents of socialisation like schools and families do not undertake the socialising of citizens into the political system as their exclusive activity. These agents also shape and socialise individuals in ad hoc and more or less influential ways, and their influence may change over time. Individuals exercise a degree of autonomy over the ways in which they absorb and integrate the new political information they receive with the information they have already stored. While processes of political socialisation are experienced by everyone, there will always be a great deal of variation in their effects on different citizens. This variation is produced by the interaction of

134

Populism personality and social factors that are specific to each individual member of society. Critics of the political socialisation approach argue that too much emphasis has been put on the idea that orientations towards the political system are learnt in childhood and will continue unchanged throughout an individual’s life. Instead, they argue that childhood political socialisation is an important factor in adult orientations towards politics but that socialisation is an ongoing process that can be shaped by events, people, and organisations that individuals encounter as adults.

Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Mobilisation’, Chapter 6 in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 122–40.

Further reading Murray Print, Lawrence Saha and Kathy Edwards, Youth Electoral Study Report 1: Enrolment and Voting, Canberra: Australian Electoral Commission, 2004, available at: http://www.aec.gov.au/ content/ what/publications/youth study 1/index.html Paul Reynolds, Political Sociology: An Australian Perspective, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1991.

Populism Central to populism is the idea that society is divided between ‘the people’ and an elite. Populists present themselves as representing and expressing the interests of the people against an elite that uses its political power to control, exploit or oppress ‘the people’. Populists argue that they are ‘in touch’ with the people and know their values, interests and desires. ‘The people’ are presented in a variety of ways. These include being true, authentic or real, ordinary or mainstream. This view of the people relies on particular ideas of national identity (which is expressed by the real people who represent the mainstream of society – in Australia they might be referred to as ‘true blue’). Populism generally feeds nationalism. It is increasingly expressed in terms of the defence of a true nation against an international elite that is seeking to impose its values and interests on the people.

135

Populism In countries that are not democracies, populists often seek to promote the revolutionary overthrow of the elite and the seizing of the institutions that express and constitute political power. In democracies, such as Australia, populism is central to electoral contests in which those in political parties seek to present themselves as the true representatives of the people. Indeed, the argument might be put that democracies promote populism. In Australia, the anti-elitism expressed by populists often emerges in attacks against intellectuals, bureaucrats, judges, and people in the major parties. The main problem with the elite, for populists, is that they impose their values on real Australians and do not listen to the voice of the people. The result is that the elite rules in such a way as to corrupt or otherwise ruin the people, who would otherwise remain true to their Australianness. Crucial to this idea are the views that the will of the people exists and that it can be discerned by populists. The view that a collective will exists is difficult to substantiate; as is the view that populists are in tune with that will, which is usually a particular type of will. The emergence of opinion polling has certainly helped populists to justify their claim of knowing what the people want; although populists usually claim a more direct connection to the people that means that populists know what the people want without need for recourse to opinion polls. Even if a popular will can be said to exist and be known by populists the question remains, however, as to whether simply implementing the will of the people is in the longterm interests of those people. While all parties claim to represent the people and can be accused of practising populism, one of the clearest recent cases of a populist party was the One Nation Party. Members of this party, led by Pauline Hanson, argued that an elite comprising the major parties, intellectuals, the bureaucracy, big business and special interest groups controlled Australian politics and used their control to introduce policies that served their interests but damaged those of ordinary or real Australians. Policies of this type included those associated with globalisation (such as freeing international trade) and multiculturalism. The problem with multiculturalism, for those in One Nation, was that it divided the people by allowing and even encouraging migrants to maintain their identification with their homeland. For

136

Post-modernism this reason the leaders of One Nation also opposed immigration by people who would not commit themselves to Australian values (that is, could not be part of one nation). They viewed particular privileges being granted to Indigenous Australians as another element of the dividing of the Australian nation.

Introductory reading Ian Cook, ‘Opinion Polling and Political Marketing’, Chapter 11 in Government and Democracy in Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 182–98.

Further reading Richard A. DeAnglis, ‘A Rising Tide for Jean-Marie, Jorg and Pauline? Xenophobic Populism in Comparative Perspective’, The Australian Journal of Politics and History 49 (2003), pp. 75–92. Gianpietro Mazzoleni, Julianne Stewart and Bruce Horsfield (eds), The Media and Neo-Populism, New York: Westport, 2003.

Post-modernism (post-modern)

One way to understand post-modernism in the context of politics is to see post-modernism as the opposite of modernism. Modernism was characterised by faith in human reason and the view that societies were improving or progressing. Central to both of these positions is a belief in a truth (or, as some might refer to it, capital ‘T’ Truth) that was derived from the use of human reason and which remained true across times and cultures. For some post-modernists the loss of faith in reason and progress was a result of developments within modern (western) society. New technologies, especially information technologies, and new social movements were breaking down the power of positions that had been held to be true and universal. This revealed the cultural specificity of the views that were held to be true in modern society. The loss of faith in reason and progress also derived from the fact that developments that could be linked to the sciences, seen by modernists as an expression of reason and a driver of progress, were causing major

137

Post-modernism social, environmental and, as a result, political problems in western societies. Other post-modernists see post-modernism as an almost unavoidable consequence of modernism. The reason that it was unavoidable for people who thought deeply about these matters was that some of the basic ideas of modernism were invalid. Of these, the faith in human reason was the most wrong-headed. It was wrong-headed for at least two reasons. The first was its reliance on some stable thinking (reasoning) entity that was an essential expression of human being. This was questionable on two grounds. The first was that there was no human essence that made people reasonable. Rather than having some thinking centre, humans were argued to be de-centred, with many different voices competing to express themselves through a single human being. The second ground for questioning the view that there was a stable thinking (reasoning) entity that was an essential expression of human being was that it denied the existence of different truths in different cultures. The fact that western society was perceived as less successful than it has been taken to be meant that the idea that all people were progressing to the point that they came to think like those in the west lost much of its power. This meant that the ways that other people saw and interacted with the world could not be rejected as inferior to (in the sense of being less advanced or progressed) than western thinking. This second form of post-modernism is an expression of a sceptical and relativist position. Sceptics deny the possibility that human beings can discover the Truth, a denial that often results in relativism. Relativists believe that what is taken to be true depends upon, or is relative to, the specific society, culture and time in and at which it was taken to be true. Extreme relativists suggest that truth is relative to each individual, but this view is not representative of postmodernist thought, and is open to a variety of objections. This sort of post-modernist will still refer to truth but here they mean a truth that is not necessary (that is, not Truth) but is taken to be true by a particular group of people. The processes that govern interactions between these people constitute the source of their truth. Authority is central to these interactions, as those who are authorised to speak on a particular subject, often referred to as experts, determine what is taken to be true. Thomas Kuhn’s idea of a paradigm is

138

Power an expression of this view of the truth; for Kuhn sees scientific communities as dominated by particular ways of studying and making claims about reality that prevent the emergence of alternative ways of studying and making claims about reality. These ideas are also expressed in a closely related philosophical position referred to as post-structuralism (which is linked to theorists such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida; see discourse). The importance of post-modernism for politics lies in the fact that post-modernism has undermined the belief in the achievement of truth and progress through reason that is central to liberalism and Marxist socialism. The culture wars in Australia and elsewhere also can be understood as a product of the rise of post-modernism, especially of the second form of post-modernism. For here we find those who defend a Truth against those who claim that this Truth is that of white European men. Attacks on post-modernism, then, are important to ideological struggle in Australia.

Introductory reading Simon Malpas, ‘Introduction: The Plurality of the Postmodern’, Chapter 1 in The Postmodern, London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 1–10.

Further reading Leslie Paul Thiele, Thinking Politics: Perspectives in Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Political Theory, New Jersey: Chantham, 1997. Honi Fern Haber, Beyond Postmodern Politics: Lyotard, Rorty, Foucault, London: Routledge, 1994.

Power

(powers, powerful) Power is central to understanding politics. Some commentators argue that power defines what politics is about. In political discussion, power tends to be used in one of two ways. The first is to describe the capacity of a political actor to do something. This is the sort of use that is central to ideas like the separation of powers in government, the division of powers in federalism, or the powers of the prime minister. In this usage, political actors are seen as having

139

Power the capacity to carry out certain tasks like passing laws or distributing portfolios within a ministry. The second meaning of power focusses on relationships between actors in which some actors bring about effects on the others by changing their behaviour or thoughts. If, for example, voters decide to change how they will cast their votes as a result of hearing a candidate’s persuasive speech, the candidate can be said to have exercised power over them. The interpretation of events in terms of power is always contested. Observers will focus on alternative parts of a political story to come up with different power-based explanations. Consider the apparently straightforward voting example given above. Suppose the voters were persuaded only because they were bombarded with messages from one candidate. They had not heard the views of alternative candidates, and those candidates were prevented by a lack of resources from getting their views across. Some political scientists would argue that this mobilisation of bias towards some views and against others is the most interesting feature of power in the story. Other political scientists would explore the power exercised over people in order to make them believe that voting and standing for parliament is important and worthwhile in the first place. These last two interpretations of what is going on in this political event focus on less formal and deeper structural elements, or what the British political theorist Steven Lukes called the second and third ‘faces’ of power. How commentators describe the overall pattern of power in Australia will also depend on which parts of the political story they emphasise. Commentators who focus on the presence of features such as elections, parliament, a free media, the range of parties and the wide array of interest groups tend to describe power in Australia as pluralistic or democratic. Those who look more deeply at the operation of some of these institutions and actors often begin to see power in Australia in more elite-oriented terms. Others view specific institutional power relations as trivial beside what they see as the defining power relations of class, gender and/or race inequality in Australia (see also equality). Arguments about how power actually operates in Australian politics are often entangled with normative arguments about how it should operate. A clear sign of this is that commentators often couch arguments about power in terms of whether or not the media, or

140

Protest business, or the executive, or parties, or the judiciary and so on have too much power. Power is a central tool in analysing political events; however, an interest in power also raises fundamental questions about how the Australian political system ought to be structured and what ends it should serve.

Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Power’, in Rodney Smith (ed.), Politics in Australia, third edition, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997, pp. 17–34.

Further reading Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View, London: Macmillan, 1974. Barry Hindess, Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.

Protest (protests)

Protest is a form of collective action in which groups use tactics such as demonstrations, rallies, sit-ins, crashing websites and civil disobedience to oppose and disrupt the actions of others, including governments. Protest often depends on large groups of people acting together with a similar purpose and viewpoint. Protest is generally associated with the actions of social movements. It will just as often be called direct action. Protest can be used by groups to commemorate or mark an event; for example, the annual International Women’s Day march is usually held on the first Saturday in March around Australia and the rest of the world. Protest can also be used by groups to publicise a political issue and bring together a large group of people. Protests are visual and are often reported on by the media as evidence of social groups trying to influence government. For example, when we visualise groups interacting with government we will rarely call to mind images of lobbying or advocacy by third sector groups. We are more likely to think of direct action, protest events such as the Clubs NSW protests against state government poker machine taxes in 2003, the 2006 Greenpeace protests against Japanese whalers in the Antarctic, or the marches to support the retaining of the South Sydney ‘Rabbitohs’

141

Public and private in the National Rugby League in 1999. Protest is often used when groups in society believe that there is no other way to promote their view to governments. For example, protest marches against war in Iraq were held around the world in February 2003 when it appeared that governments like Australia’s were determined to ignore dissenting views on the justification, risks and consequences of military action. Protest events are designed to be difficult to avoid. They grab attention and gain power by disrupting the actions of others. For example, Critical Mass is a monthly meeting of bicycle riders that occurs in cities around the world. The groups ride en masse through the streets, with a different destination at each meeting. Their international website states that ‘Critical Mass is not an organization, it’s an unorganized coincidence. It’s a movement . . . of bicycles, in the streets’. Critical Mass is a protest event that promotes awareness about environmental issues and urban transportation by disrupting the actions of others. Motor vehicle drivers, who would otherwise be the main users of the streets, are disrupted from their normal practice.

Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Movements for Change’, Chapter 12 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005, pp. 343–78.

Further reading Sean Scalmer, Dissent Events: Protest, The Media, and the Political Gimmick in Australia, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002. Phil Thornton, Liam Phelan and Bill McKeown, I Protest! Fighting for Your Rights, Sydney: Pluto Press, 1997.

Public and private The differentiation between public and private is used in two main political contexts. First, it refers to a standard economic sector classification used in Australia and other places. Thus the Australian economy is divided between units that are part of the government

142

Public and private sector or are controlled by units of the general government sector, known collectively as the public sector, and all other economic units, known as the business or private sector. The second distinction between public and private is used to refer to public and private spheres of citizen activity. This is a term used in political theory to differentiate between a citizen’s public life of work, community life and politics and their private life of family, caring relationships and friendships. A focus on the relationship between public and private in policy-making in Australia has meant that issues such as domestic violence and child care have been brought from the private sphere into public debate (see gender). The publicand private-sphere distinction is central to political thought around community and feminism. Both uses of public and private carry the implication of either a competition or interdependency between the two arenas. In Australian policy-making there is currently particularly strong debate about the competition between the public and private sectors in two areas of service delivery – school education and health – as well as an increasing focus on public–private partnerships in the delivery of publicly used infrastructure such as buildings and roads. For example, in Australia young people can be educated in public (state government) or private (independent) schools throughout the country. Education at public schools is free in most states, although most schools do have a small voluntary annual fee to cover extra activities. Most public schools are co-educational, and approximately seventy per cent of all young people attend them. Most private schools fall into one of two categories: schools administered by the Catholic Education Office, and independent schools of other religious persuasions administered by their own boards. Private, or independent, schools have their own fee structure and receive a subsidy from both Commonwealth and state governments. Many private schools are either exclusively all boy or all girl schools. Debate surrounds issues like the levels of public subsidisation of private schools, the freedom of private schools to refuse employment to teachers who do not share a particular religious or sexual identity (see identity politics) or do not subscribe to particular values, and the right of private schools to teach theories that are not recognised as valid within wider expert communities.

143

Public opinion Introductory reading Andrew Vincent, ‘Feminism’, Chapter 7 in Modern Political Ideologies, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, pp. 201–4.

Further reading Carole Pateman, ‘Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy’, Chapter 6 in The Disorder of Women, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989, pp. 118–40. Graeme Hodge, ‘The Risky Business of Public-Private Partnerships’, Australian Journal of Public Administration 63 (2004), pp. 37–49.

Public opinion Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the general population. It is often argued in representative democracies that public opinion has the power to ensure that the majority rules and that leaders will rule for the greatest happiness of the greater number (see also utilitarianism and representation). Public opinion is most commonly expressed through opinion polls published by the media. Opinion polls become more and more crucial during election campaigns. Opinion polls are regularly used by newspapers to talk about the current state of voting preferences for the major political parties and to evaluate policy proposals and political leaders. For example, The Australian newspaper regularly cites Newspoll opinion poll results, ACNielsen polls are used by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and other political opinion polls widely cited in the media are provided by Roy Morgan Research. Political parties also increasingly use internally funded private polling of public opinion to gain a sense of their own popularity, their leader’s popularity and the acceptance of their policy agendas among the broader electorate, or among particular sections of the electorate such as voters who live in marginal seats. The results of these polls are generally not released by the parties. With a randomly selected opinion poll sample of 1000 to 1500 people drawn from the Australian population, accurate predictions

144

Introductory reading about what that population thinks can be made. However, the sample has to be random, or a stratified random sample. This means that everyone has an equal chance of being included. Just polling people in the street – a convenience sample – will not give you an accurate picture of opinions of anyone else beyond the handful of people talked to in the street. Accurate random selection is increasingly difficult. There is no overall listing of all Australian citizens to select people from. Pollsters tend to use either randomly selected numbers from the telephone book, which is limited because of unlisted numbers and people’s increasing reliance on their mobile telephones; or the electoral roll, which includes addresses but not telephone numbers. Australians in general are also becoming more reluctant to respond to telephone polls. Response rates for mail-out surveys are very low and internet-based surveys only reach people who are online at home or work. Governments and political parties often use opinion poll results to help guide their policy-making decisions, as they provide a quick snapshot of what people think. They will often cite public opinion as part of their political rhetoric. However, the relationship between policy-making and public opinion is not straightforward. Governments are not obliged to act in particular ways because of opinion polls undertaken by commercial pollsters. Nor can we always understand what people think and feel about an issue based on a single opinion poll. An individual’s thoughts and feelings may be more complex than a quick snapshot is able to relay. Opinion polls may measure opinions that are changeable and not very important to people. When particular policy-making issues are not a feature of people’s everyday lives, it is difficult to ascertain the depth of their opinion. It is also impossible to tell whether people will change their actions because of the opinion they express through a poll. This means that the relationship between the way people vote and the way people respond to opinion polls is not straightforward.

Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Participation and Opinion’, Chapter 10 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005, pp. 283–312.

145

Public sector Further reading Murray Goot, ‘Distrustful, Disenchanted and Disengaged? Public Opinion on Politics, Politicians and the Parties: An Historical Perspective’, in David Burchell and Andrew Leigh (eds), The Prince’s New Clothes: Why Do Australians Dislike Their Politicians, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002, pp. 9–46. Shaun Wilson, Gabrielle Meagher, Rachel Gibson, David Denemark and Mark Western (eds), Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005.

Public sector (public sectors)

The public sector is now commonly used as an umbrella term for all the various organisations owned and run by the Commonwealth, state, territory and local governments. Public sector agencies cannot be distinguished from private sector businesses and community or third sector organisations solely by the functions they carry out. The public, private and third sectors have, for example, each played roles in schooling over many years and the three sectors increasingly carry out activities in competition with each other in areas such as welfare provision. The key feature that distinguishes the public sector from the other two sectors is public ownership and control. Until the 1990s, the term public sector was generally reserved for those parts of government activity that did not fall under Commonwealth or state public service acts and therefore did not form part of the public service proper. Thus the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as a statutory authority not directly responsible to a minister, was part of the public sector and not the public service. The public service and the public sector were understood to comprise the government bureaucracy. This distinction has since collapsed and the public sector now encompasses the whole range of bodies created by governments, including public service departments, government corporations, statutory authorities, boards and other bodies. In large part, this change in nomenclature occurred because of changes to the Commonwealth and state public services from the 1980s. The public service boards that used to control the recruitment and promotion of career tenured public servants and the staffing

146

Public sector levels of the different public service departments were abolished as part of the move to managerialism in government. Many public service departments were renamed, and the concept of agencies began to replace departments. Senior public service positions were re-established on a contractual basis to increase accountability to ministers and public service departments have since undergone repeated waves of restructuring and re-orientation to meet the dominant principles of economic rationalism. The previously distinctive role, ethos and status of the public service became seen by many politicians and commentators as outmoded and public service reform became seen simply as part of a wider program of public sector transformation. Over the same period that Australian discussion of the public service has been subsumed into discussion of the public sector, the public sector has been widely criticised by supporters of economic rationalism and others. Among other recent criticisms, public sector agencies have been accused of having a silo mentality. This means that individual agencies are accused of being unable to look beyond their own particular areas of expertise and responsibility to work with other agencies across the public sector to solve public problems. Supporters of traditional public sector values of serving the public, equity and universality of provision have found it hard to compete in recent public debates against the private sector’s claims to efficient provision and the third sector’s promises of caring and personal service provision.

Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Policy Delivery’, Chapter 5 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005, pp. 119–47.

Further reading Chris Aulich, John Halligan and Sandra Nutley (eds), Australian Handbook of Public Sector Management, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001. John Halligan, ‘Public Sector Reform’, in Chris Aulich and Roger Wettenhall (eds), Howard’s Second and Third Governments, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005, pp. 21–41.

147

Race

Rr Race

(racism, racist) Aside from its most general use to distinguish humans as a species from other animals (‘the human race’), race has been used in three politically important ways. First, race is sometimes used as a synonym for ethnicity or national identity. Second, race has been used to refer to a set of apparently objective distinctions between humans based on biological, physical or genetic markers. The third way race is used is to attach cultural, political or ideological meanings to particular biological or genetic differences. Understood in this way, races are the results of groups defining themselves as different to others in socially important ways by virtue of one or more physical characteristics, such as skin colour or eye shape. The first use of race is less common in contemporary Australian political usage than it once was, having mostly been displaced by the use of terms like ethnicity, national identity and nationalism to denote people with shared cultural characteristics. This meaning of race, however, has continued in words like ‘racial’ and ‘racism’. The 1975 Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act, for example, covers discrimination based on ‘race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin’, while racism is the term most commonly applied to prejudice and discrimination against ethnic groups or nationalities. Thus Pauline Hanson was accused of racism when she claimed, among other things, that Australia would be ‘swamped by Asians’ with their own culture and religion. Similarly, the Liberal Party was criticised for ‘playing the race card’ in the 2001 federal election by opposing the entry into Australia of boats carrying Middle Eastern refugees.

148

Race The second use of race is also now relatively uncommon. Claims of objective racial divisions based on biology or genetics have very little support within the scientific community. In the past, attempts to establish such divisions were often associated with an ideology of social Darwinism, which led to different treatment of people according to their biological heritage. Australian public policies, such as the widespread forced removal of Indigenous children from their parents, proceeded on the basis that individuals could be distinguished by their different proportions of Aboriginal ‘blood’ and should be treated differently if they were ‘full bloods’, ‘half castes’, ‘quadroons’ and so on. The third use of race implies that biological differences are only important in differentiating people when those differences are highlighted in an ideology, rhetoric or discourse. On this understanding, racial lines are always politically constructed. The political basis of racial distinctions is revealed by the arbitrariness of the physical characteristics used to define races and the imprecise and unstable relationships between characteristics and race labels. In Australian discourse, for example, people from Asia and the Middle East are mostly excluded from the term ‘white’ but are commonly implicitly included among ‘whites’ when that term is counterposed to ‘blacks’. Similarly, when some Aboriginal spokespeople insist that they belong to a race and not an ethnic group, this insistence can be understood as a political attempt to establish a special position for Aborigines as the first Australians and to avoid their being simply lumped in with other minority ethnic groups. Racism is the assumption or explicit claim that some races (defined in any of the three senses above) are superior to others in some way. Racism may manifest itself in the thoughts, statements and actions of individuals and groups, or in the laws and policies of institutions, including governments. Australian politics once contained open racism, exemplified by the long-standing White Australia Policy. Since the 1970s, policies of multiculturalism and anti-discrimination have made open racism less common. Political actors are sensitive to accusations that they are racist or that they support the racism of others for political advantage. More broadly, debates about whether or not Australian culture in general is racist have been a core issue in the culture wars.

149

Radical Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Invasion’, Chapter 7 in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 141–69.

Further reading David Marr and Marian Wilkinson, Dark Victory, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003. Jon Stratton, Race Daze, Sydney: Pluto, 1998.

Radical (radicals)

We can speak of people, ideologies and reforms as radical. In the case of people we are referring to those who want fundamental change in their society. Often this change is political and it is those ideologies that promote significant political change that we refer to as radical (to which we can contrast conservative ideologies, which support the maintenance of existing social and political conditions and resistance to significant change). When we refer to reforms as radical, such as a radical overhaul of the higher education system, we are likely to mean that these reforms will have a significant effect on those in that system. One of the most radical of the political ideologies that has been expressed and supported in Australia was socialism, especially Marxist or scientific socialism. With the decline of support for socialism, environmentalism may well be the most radical of the political ideologies currently expressed and supported in Australia. This is because the sorts of changes to our ways of thinking, living and working that may be required for environmental sustainability are likely to be fundamental. Another candidate for the title of radical is neo-liberalism. While this view is often presented as a return to the core ideas of liberalism, the core ideas of neo-liberalism are unlike those that were central to liberalism in Australia before the rise of neo-liberalism. Freeing Australian markets to overseas competition and reducing government regulation of the economy can be argued

150

Radical to have had profound effects on the way that Australians think, live and work. Radical has two specific uses in contemporary Australian politics that deserve discussion here. The first is in the phrase radical feminism and the second in radical Islam. Radical feminists deny that the reforms to society proposed by the other dominant forms of Australian feminism, that is liberal, socialist and post-modern feminism, will have any real effect on gender relations (either in this country or elsewhere). One reason for this is their view that men are basically aggressive, violent and even misogynist. The view that men need to dominate and oppress women led many radical feminists to promote separatism (the separation of the sexes so that women can be free from male violence and attempts at domination). Many radical feminists also support the use of technologies to free women’s bodies from the burden of childbirth and some support fundamental changes to the way that child care is understood and provided in this country. The use of the phrase radical Islam is, like that in radical feminism, part of an attempt to distinguish between different forms of Islam. Moderate Muslims, in this construction, do not reject the west as an evil force and do not seek to introduce traditional Islamic practices, such as those associated with shariah law. Moderate Muslims, in this construction, are open to democracy and changing the role and social position of women. Radical Muslims, in this construction, reject the west and see it as an evil force that is spreading through violence and the expansion of western economic control through globalisation. Radical Muslims reject democracy as a western idea and seek to maintain the role and social position of women in their society. Radical Muslims, more importantly for Australians, can justify and be willing to use violence, such as bombing consulates, hotels and nightclubs, because they see themselves as in a battle for the future against a superior military but inferior cultural force. A form of radical political ideology and practice that was not particularly influential in Australia but was influential in other countries was anarchism. Anarchists believed that people could only be free if the political institutions were rendered inoperable. This led them to

151

Religion seek to destroy important political sites, such as parliaments, and led to the stereotype of the bomb-throwing anarchist.

Introductory reading Dennis Altman, ‘Who We Are and What We Want’, Chapter 2 in Rehearsals for Change: Politics and Culture in Australia, Melbourne: Collins, 1980, pp. 9–40.

Further reading Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society, Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1989. Roger S. Gottlieb, Radical Philosophy: Tradition, Counter-Tradition, Politics, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.

Religion

(religions, religiosity, religious) Religion is a notoriously difficult concept. In political debate and analysis, religion is usually defined in a sociological way as shared beliefs, experiences and practices relating to the sacred that unite people into a more or less organised group. The sacred may encompass one or more gods, as well as other forces that transcend or go beyond everyday human experiences. An emphasis on the collective element in religion is often used to distinguish it from spirituality, which can be understood as an individual’s own privately held sacred beliefs and rituals. While individual spirituality may be politically important if it is held by a powerful person who uses it to inform his or her actions, the more important effects of the sacred on politics will concern religion; that is, they will involve groups that follow competing sacred beliefs, traditions, experiences and practices. Although Australia is often claimed to be a country where secularism has long prevailed and is getting stronger, religion has always played a role in its politics. In part, this is because of the dominance of varieties of Christianity within Australian society. Christian-derived symbols and language are found in the formalities of Australian political practice. Parliamentary proceedings, for example, begin with prayer. At a deeper level, many of Australia’s laws have been

152

Religion shaped by traditional understandings of Christian teaching brought from the United Kingdom and Ireland. It would be a mistake to see religion solely as a unifying force in Australian politics. Australian politics has been marked by sectarianism; that is, active intolerance and hostility between different religious groups. Historically, this sectarianism typically took the form of conflict between the majority Protestants (including Anglicans) and the minority Catholics; however, conflicts between nonconformist Protestants and Anglicans and between the churches and secularists were also important. For much of the twentieth century, the Catholic–Protestant sectarian divide took on a partisan dimension, with Protestants firmly in control of the Liberal and Country parties and a strong Catholic presence throughout the Labor Party. Catholic–Protestant hostility died out as the social disadvantage experienced by Catholics diminished and the active membership of Protestant and Catholic churches declined. New interest groups and social movements representing women, gays and lesbians and others have challenged the previously privileged place of churches in public policy debates over censorship, the family, abortion and sexuality (see also representation). In response, the churches have tended to work together across the old dividing lines, presenting a combined front on policy issues where possible. Sectarianism is now commonly directed at minority religions such as traditional Aboriginal sacred beliefs, Islam and Buddhism. In recent decades, the official Christian church approach has tended to see Christianity and Aboriginal beliefs as complementary and the churches have supported Aboriginal land claims based on traditional religious beliefs. Aboriginal land claims have, however, been opposed by a number of prominent individual Christians and secularists who have ridiculed their religious basis. While some Australian Christians and secularists viewed Muslims with suspicion and fear before September 11, 2001, the common association of Islam with terrorism and radical politics in the media and public opinion since the New York attacks has increased hostility between Muslims and others. As with Protestant–Catholic sectarianism before it, contemporary Australian sectarianism often has underpinnings of racism. Perhaps because religion is often associated with conflict rather than unity, Australian political leaders have been more cautious

153

Representation about invoking it in recent years than their counterparts in some other democracies, notably the United States. Nonetheless, the prime ministership of John Howard saw religion become more prominent in Australian political affairs, and Howard worked hard to develop a rhetoric which combined appeals to traditional Christian values with an apparent respect for alternative standpoints. The impact of such religious rhetoric on Australian voters is unclear. Explicitly religious parties have struggled in Australian elections. Family First, the most recent religious party of note, caused a stir by winning a Senate seat in 2004; however, it did so as a result of preference deals and claimed less than two per cent of the primary vote. More generally, religion seems to have exerted an influence on Australian voters in two ways. First, Protestants have been more likely to vote for the Coalition parties than other voters. Second, churchgoers, regardless of their religious affiliation, have been more likely to support the Coalition than non-attenders.

Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Religion’, Chapter 11 in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 252–77.

Further reading Michael Hogan, The Sectarian Strand, Ringwood: Penguin, 1987. Marion Maddox, God Under Howard: The Rise of the Religious Right in Australian Politics, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005.

Representation

(represent, representations, representative, representatives, represented, representing, represents) In politics, a representative is a person who speaks and acts on behalf of others. A representative democracy is a political system in which a relatively small group of people speak and make decisions on behalf of a much greater number of people. In Australia, parliamentary representation is based on location or geography. Representatives represent electorates, which are defined by geographical boundaries (with the largest of these being the states, the people of which are represented in the Senate).

154

Representation An alternative is for representatives to represent particular social and economic roles. The system of representation in Hong Kong, for example, includes functional representation in which business people, educators and health professionals, among others, have specific representatives. This form of representation has been practised in Australia in summits conducted at both the state and Commonwealth levels. The summits allow members of important social groups to participate in policy-making in areas in which they have a particular interest. Representatives of business groups and unions have been co-opted by Australian Commonwealth and state governments to assist in the formulation of policy on industrial matters. Representatives of those whose roles and experiences give them a particular insight into the issues associated with illicit drug use have also been incorporated into the policy-making process by state governments, which conduct summits to assist in policy-making with respect to illicit drug use. The crucial question, in the context of representative democracy at least, is what representatives do when they represent. In other words, the key issue concerns what has to happen before we can argue that representation has occurred. This is an important question because our understanding of what representation is will affect our view as to whether we have representation, or true representation, in Australia. In a classic work on representation, the American political theorist Hanna Pitkin argued that representation could be understood as any one of three relationships. First, representation could refer to a relationship in which representatives act as agents for those who they represent. In this relationship, representatives must act on instructions from those who they represent. Second, representation could represent a relationship in which a representative acts for, but not under instruction from, those who they represent. Pitkin referred to this relationship as that between a trustee and a beneficiary. Trustees are often used when people are too young or too unwell to make decisions that are in their interests. In such a situation, trustees make decisions that they believe to be in the interests of their beneficiaries. Finally, representation could refer to a relationship in which a person who has the same principal attributes as another person speaks and acts for that person. Pitkin referred to

155

Representation this as a mirror approach to representation (in which representation occurred because the representative was like the represented). We can say that an agent form of representation has occurred in situations where it is clear that a representative is acting on instructions from those who they represent. This is sometimes invoked when politicians claim that they have received a mandate from the people to implement a policy. While it refers to a direct relationship in which a representative can be thought to speak and act on behalf of those who they represent, there are a couple of problems with this approach when it comes to Australian politics. The first is that this mandate can only be claimed following an election and is difficult to sustain because of the complexity of elections, in which a number of policies are often central to the outcome. The second problem relates to the difficulty of producing the sort of ongoing interaction between representatives and represented that is required by the agent–principal relationship. Extensive and relatively continuous opinion polling, facilitated by new information technologies, might reduce the significance of this problem with creating the agent–principal relationship. The most common way in which representation is claimed in Australian politics is in terms of a trusteeship-type relationship. In this case, and in a manner that can be associated with populism, representatives claim to know what is in the people’s real or true interests. This can lead to a situation in which representatives can refuse to speak or act in accordance with the view expressed by a majority of the represented because to do so would not be in the real interests of the Australian people. In the final approach to representation, the relationship between the represented and the representative is based on their being alike with respect to important characteristics. One way to approach this issue is through a consideration of the representativeness of Australian parliaments. Australian parliaments are dominated, both numerically and otherwise, by old, white, middle class men. The question that arises in this context concerns whether there is representation when parliamentarians are debating and making decisions about issues that most directly affect women, Indigenous Australians or people of non-Anglo-Celtic ethnicity. Those who adopt a mirror approach to representation would contend that these men cannot

156

Republic understand what it is like to be female, Indigenous, of another ethnicity or poor. In their view, only women, Indigenous Australians and non-Anglo-Celts can know what it is like to be female, Indigenous, of another ethnicity or poor. Their understanding means that they represent those who are like them simply by being themselves.

Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Representation’, Part 3 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin 2005, pp. 177–280.

Further reading Hanna Pitkin, The Concept of Representation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. Marian Sawer and Gianni Zappala (eds), Speaking for the People: Representation in Australian Politics, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001.

Republic There are two uses of the word republic, one of which is an extended version of the other. In one use, the limited one, a republic is simply a system of government in which those in positions of political power derive their power from the people they govern. More often than not, this system is a representative democracy, as such a system provides the clearest indication that the people have given power to those who govern them (see also representation). This use of the term republic can be contrasted with a monarchy, in which those in positions of political power derive their power from inheritance. Australia is often referred to as a constitutional monarchy, which means that it is a monarchy largely in name only and for the most part resembles a republic. It is a constitutional monarchy because the head of state, the Governor-General, is appointed by the Queen of England and is the Queen’s representative. While governorsgeneral have generally been as politically passive as the Queen has been, the dismissal of the Whitlam government reminded people that the Governor-General could become a powerful actor under certain conditions (and even more powerful than the Queen).

157

Republic A referendum was held on the 6th of November 1999 in which Australians were asked whether they wished to create a republic by replacing the Governor-General with a President appointed by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth parliament. This was referred to as the minimalist model because the change was presented as being simply one of changing the process for appointing the Governor-General, from one in which the Prime Minister advised the Queen as to who she should appoint as Governor-General to one in which the major parties would control the appointment of the President. The process proposed at the time involved five steps. First, nominations from members of the public would be called for. These would be reduced to a short-list by a nominations committee. The Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition would then select one candidate who had to achieve support from two-thirds of the members of both houses of parliament to become President. The referendum failed to achieve either an overall majority or a majority in a majority of states (the ‘double majority’ required by Section 128 of the Constitution). It was defeated because the change was both too radical and not radical enough. It was too radical for those conservatives who supported constitutional monarchy. They feared that, if passed, the referendum proposal would result in turmoil if a situation such as that which occurred in 1975 happened again. The referendum proposal was not radical enough for those who believed that it would simply entrench and increase the power of the major parties, whose dominance of Australian politics already creates doubts as to the representativeness and responsiveness of the Australian political system. Many of those who argued that the proposal was not radical enough argued that the Australian President should be elected directly by the people. This explanation for the failure of the republic referendum reflects something of the second understanding of a republic. In this extended use of the term, a republic is a political system in which citizens actively participate in public debates because they recognise that this involvement constitutes the fullest expression of their human being. A republic, in this understanding, is more than simply a set of political institutions. It is a way of life. A republic refers to both the formal processes that enable this system of government and

158

Responsibility the attitudes and behaviour of citizens whose participation in formal and informal processes is an essential part of them being members of their society and of seeing themselves as members of society. The direct election position reflects something of this model because the minimalist model did not allow for, or encourage, significant citizen participation in the process of choosing the GovernorGeneral. As a result, it did not reflect the values of active citizens who saw participation in such a decision as an important part of the opportunities and duties that defined citizenship. Many Australians rejected the minimalist model because they thought of a republic in a more extended way than was reflected in the minimalist model.

Introductory reading Helen Irving, ‘The Republic Debate’, in John Summers, Dennis Woodward and Andrew Parkin (eds), Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia, seventh edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2002, pp. 135–49.

Further reading Mark McKenna, This Country: A Reconciled Republic?, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2004. Republic Advisory Committee, An Australian Republic: Options, Report, Volume 1, Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 1993.

Responsibility

(responsibilities, responsible) In everyday terms, to have responsibility is to be relied upon to do something. In political usage, responsibility has two common meanings. The first involves the social and political expectations placed on individual citizens to behave in a particular way. In the second usage, government ministers are commonly referred to as being responsible for particular areas of policy formulation and delivery, as in ‘the minister responsible for aged care’. Like its close cousin accountability, responsibility often means having to answer to someone else. Thus ministers in Westminster-style systems like Australia’s are held to be responsible – answerable for their

159

Responsibility actions – to members of the parliament who in turn are responsible to the electors. By the mid-nineteenth century, demands for Britain to grant the Australian colonies self-government were understood as demands for responsible government; that is, for governments answerable to local parliaments and electors rather than to the British government. Responsible government in Australia can be dated to the passage of constitution acts granting self-government for the colonies in 1855 and popular (male) elections for the colonial parliaments from 1856. From that time, responsible government and Westminster government have been used as synonyms in Australian political commentary (although other political systems have developed alternative methods to those of the Westminster model for ensuring governmental responsibility). Much of the Australian debate around responsible government concerns the operation of two conventions of ministerial responsibility. The first, termed collective ministerial responsibility, requires members of the ministry to support publicly all decisions made by cabinet, regardless of their own views, and to preserve the confidentiality of cabinet discussions. Thus each minister is responsible for every decision of the cabinet, and all stand or fall together. The second, more contentious, convention of individual ministerial responsibility requires ministers to be accountable for their official actions, for their private actions and for at least some of the actions of the government agencies within their portfolio responsibilities. A minister’s failure to account adequately for actions in one or more of these areas should lead to sanctions. These sanctions may be selfimposed (an apology or resignation), imposed by the Prime Minister (a forced resignation, sacking, demotion or reprimand), or imposed by parliament (a censure motion or forced resignation). Being conventions, these elements of responsibility have developed over time and are rarely clear-cut in their application. Until the 1960s, for instance, ministers were seen to be responsible for all actions of their public service departments; however, since then their perceived responsibility has narrowed to departmental actions about which they were aware and which they could reasonably have prevented. Under the managerialism that now governs the public sector, it is more likely that public sector heads rather than ministers

160

Responsibility will resign or be sacked over serious bureaucratic mistakes. Until the 1990s, ministers who were shown to have misled parliament, even unintentionally, would face pressure to resign. The more recent and arguably weaker standard is that ministers who unintentionally mislead parliament should not face sanction as long as they correct the record after becoming aware of their error. Debate has thus shifted from whether ministers have misled parliament to whether the misleading was intentional and whether they have made corrections speedily enough. Prime Minister John Howard’s attempts to codify ministerial standards in the late 1990s have not reduced the ambiguities surrounding the requirements of ministerial responsibility. Ministerial resignations and dismissals are often taken, rather naively, as the sole measure of the success or failure of ministerial responsibility. On this score, commentators might argue that ministerial responsibility has improved markedly in recent decades, since ministerial resignations and sackings have been much more common since 1970 than they were during the first seven decades after federation. An alternative argument based on the same figures is that the greater number of recent dismissals and resignations shows that fewer ministers now abide by expected standards of responsibility than did so in the past. Rates of dismissals and sackings cannot tell us by themselves whether or not ministerial responsibility is working. Determining the state of ministerial responsibility requires careful examination of the prevailing culture within parliament and the ministry, as well as the operation of parliamentary mechanisms for holding governments accountable, such as Question Time and parliamentary committees.

Introductory reading John Summers, ‘Parliament and Responsible Government’, in John Summers, Dennis Woodward and Andrew Parkin (eds), Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2002, pp. 23–48.

Further reading David Hamer, Can Responsible Government Survive in Australia?, Canberra: University of Canberra, 1994.

161

Rights Prime Minister, A Guide on Key Elements of Ministerial Responsibility, Canberra, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 1998. Available at: http://www.dpmc.gov.au/guidelines/docs/ ministerial responsibility.pdf.

Rights (right)

The question of what rights are can be approached in at least two ways. We might think of them in terms of what they do. That is, we can think about them in terms of the consequences that flow from a successful claim to have a right. We can also think of them in terms of how they are derived. In this case, we think about the bases upon which people claim to have rights. When we think about what rights do, we may find them doing one of two things. A person might claim a right in order to derive protection for their behaviour. We claim a right to life when we fear that others might kill us. We claim a right to property when we believe that others might take it from us. We claim a right to privacy when we feel that people are intruding or might intrude on something that we feel is not their business. We claim a right to free speech when we are being silenced or are being threatened with punishment if we were to say certain things. The other reason that a person might claim to have a right is to demand those conditions, resources or opportunities that would allow them to achieve their goals. We can claim a right to live in an unpolluted environment because a polluted environment prevents us from achieving the goal of being healthy. We might claim a right to a free and high-quality education because without such an education we cannot achieve the success that educated people can achieve. There are two principal answers to the question concerning why we can think of people as having rights, or the question of how rights are derived. One answer presents rights as deriving from nature. From this perspective, human rights derive from human nature, as people need certain freedoms, conditions and supports in order to be truly and fully human. These freedoms and supports constitute

162

Rights things to which humans have rights. This view of rights as natural is a basis upon which some people argue that other natural entities, such as animals and plants, also have rights. When human rights are understood to be natural they are usually believed to apply to all people in all cultures at all times. In this case, rights are said to be universal. The other answer to the question concerning why we can think of people as having rights is that they derive from society. We think of others and ourselves as having rights because we have been brought up to think that way. We think of ourselves in terms of specific rights because we have been taught to think of ourselves in terms of those particular rights. From this perspective, rights only extend to entities other than humans, such as animals and plants, if humans come to think of those entities as having rights. This view of the source of rights also makes rights specific to particular cultures (and, therefore, rights are not taken to be universal). One issue that has arisen concerning rights relates to whether rights only belong to individuals (which means that we can only refer to individual rights) or whether they can also belong to groups (which means that we can refer to individual and collective rights). This issue is significant because it involves the question of whether some people in a society can claim rights that others in the community cannot claim. Two instances in which this occurs in Australia involve claims that women and Indigenous Australians have rights that men or non-Indigenous Australians do not have. Recognition of rights under native title has been a significant cause of dispute in Australian politics; with some people claiming that Indigenous Australians are receiving special treatment that other Australians are not. Attempts to claim rights for women as women, rather than merely as individuals, have had little success, so objections to their receiving special treatment rarely arise. Australia is one of the last, if not the last, of the western countries to not formally recognise human rights in a specific piece of legislation (usually called a Bill of Rights). Some rights are protected through common law (or judge-made law), particular Acts of parliament (such as laws that protect privacy and those that are intended to prevent discrimination) and, since 1992, by the High Court implying rights into the Constitution (in this case a right to freedom of speech

163

Rights as implied in the attempt to create a liberal democracy that was central to the creation of the Australian Constitution.

Introductory reading David Kinley and Denny Martin, ‘The Institutional Mediation of Human Rights in Australia’, in Paul Boreham, Geoffrey Stokes and Richard Hall (eds), The Politics of Australian Society: Political Issues for the New Century, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2004, pp. 180–200.

Further reading Bain Attwood, Rights for Aborigines, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003. Peter Jones, Rights: Issues in Political Theory, London: Palgrave, 1994.

164

Secularism

Ss Secularism (secularists)

Secular is often contrasted with words like sacred or religious to indicate a focus on matters of the material world. The distinction only makes sense if it is assumed that religion can be separated from other parts of human activity, so that some areas of life can be viewed as religious and others as non-religious, or secular. Such an assumption is uncommon in traditional societies but common in modern societies. In traditional societies, religion and politics were (and are) indistinguishable areas of activity carried out by the same people in the same institutions. Australian society differentiates between religion and politics, priests and politicians, temples and parliaments. Having accepted such distinctions, a key question is what relationship religion and politics (along with other non-religious activities) should have to each other. Secularism provides two different responses to this question. Both of them developed in the nineteenth century and both have been influential in Australian politics. The first response claims that religion has no legitimate role in political life and that politics should focus on tangible human benefits. This view tends to equate religions with dangerous superstitions that impede rational policy-making. The second secular response, often associated with liberalism, argues that religion can have a role in politics; however, one religion should not be privileged over another and nor should religious viewpoints and interests be privileged over secular outlooks and interests. This form of secularism recognises the legitimate place in politics of a plurality of values and interests, no matter their

165

Secularism apparently non-rational basis, and attempts to construct political rules and policy outcomes so that no value or interest dominates. Australia is commonly regarded as a strongly and increasingly secular society. Perhaps for this reason, Australian religious groups and individuals have often found themselves supporters of the second variety of secularism outlined above, since it offers them political protection in a way that the first form of secularism does not. The recently contentious issue of the head coverings worn by Muslim women and girls illustrates this difference. The French government, drawing on the first version of secularism, has banned the wearing of head coverings and other prominent religious symbols in schools. Australian Muslim girls, on the other hand, have been able to assert their right to wear head coverings to school, not because Australian governments endorse Islam, but on the basis that a secular state should not discriminate against a particular religious practice. Australian debates about secularism are often couched in terms of a separation of church and state. They began with nineteenthcentury conflict over whether colonial governments should financially support churches and church-run schools, a conflict that has persisted in various forms ever since. Section 116 of the Australian Constitution provides a limited commitment to secular government, in that it prevents the Commonwealth government from making ‘any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any public office or public trust under the Commonwealth’. This Section is based on a similar provision in the United States Constitution. In contrast with American judicial experience, the Australian High Court has rarely been called upon to interpret Section 116. Its judgements suggest that the Section provides few protections against Commonwealth governments passing laws whose effects result in support for particular religious organisations. Moreover, Section 116 applies only to the Commonwealth. Most state governments can pass laws deliberately favouring or disadvantaging particular religions if they so choose. The fact that such laws are rare and that governments at Commonwealth and state level adopt a secular approach to public policy must therefore be put down to the strength of secular

166

Security assumptions within Australian political culture at elite and mass levels, rather than constitutional barriers. In contrast to their American peers, Australian political leaders rarely trumpet their religious convictions, even when these are deeply held. Religious arguments tend not to be central to policy debates, apart from those over a small number of moral issues on which parliamentarians are free to exercise what is commonly called a ‘conscience vote’. These secular assumptions were underscored by the recent public debate about the Howard government’s use of religious bodies, among others, to deliver outsourced welfare and employment services and by the government’s defence of this use on efficiency rather than religious grounds.

Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Religion’, Chapter 11 in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 252–77.

Further reading Michael Hogan, The Sectarian Strand, Ringwood: Penguin, 1987. Marion Maddox, For God and Country: Religious Dynamics in Australian Federal Politics, Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2001.

Security In everyday usage, security conveys the idea of safety or protection against danger, risk or harm. In some influential political theories, such as those of the seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the desire for security is what forces people to accept government in the first place. To protect themselves from the natural condition of a war of all against all, Hobbes argued, people will contract with each other to accept the security offered by an authoritarian government. This idea is clearly echoed in current Australian debates about the extent to which the government should impose restrictions on people to provide security from threats such as terrorism. Against criticism from liberals wanting to retain the existing civil rights of Australians, Prime Minister John Howard and others have argued that increased government powers are justified in order to secure the lives of individuals.

167

Security Political debates about security are not restricted to immediate and direct threats to life. In fact, much of the debate over the role of government is about which aspects of life governments should try to make secure. The rationale for the development of the welfare state in Australia, for example, was to provide security of basic living standards for people through government-provided pensions, benefits and services. For many years, this rationale was reflected in the name of the government department that administered most of these programs, the Department of Social Security. Recent debates about the government’s workplace laws have focussed on competing claims about their impact on security of employment, wages and conditions. The 2001 federal election was dominated by debates over the security of Australian borders against entry by asylum seekers. Environmental groups regularly urge Australian governments to secure Australia against threats such as salinity, land degradation and global warming. The idea of security also underlies an influential theory of voting called post-materialism. The theory, loosely based on the ideas of American psychologist Abraham Maslow, is that people will attempt to secure basic material needs like food and shelter before they try to satisfy less concrete aesthetic, expressive and intellectual needs. Thus most voters will support parties like the Liberal, National and Labor parties that focus their policies on material security and law and order. Only middle class voters who are already materially secure will, according to the theory, vote for parties like the Australian Democrats and Greens that focus their policies on values such as participation, freedom of expression, enjoyment of the environment and the like. Security is an equally important idea in international relations. The threat of war between states has to be resolved without recourse to a governing body that can impose security. While states often seek to cooperate with other states, the threat of war spurs them to maintain defence forces and to ally themselves with other states. Since World War Two, the ‘American alliance’ has been central to Australian perceptions of external security. The Australia, New Zealand, United States (ANZUS) Security Treaty signed in 1951 requires the signatories to act in the event of military hostility in the Pacific or armed attack on one of them. Although many

168

Self-Determination commentators see ANZUS as a guarantee of Australian security, critics have often pointed out that the treaty does not commit the United States of America to coming to the military aid of Australia. Australians have long debated whether or not their security interests are promoted or undermined by the close military alliance between Australia and the United States. This debate was most recently intensified by Australian involvement in the US-led invasion of Iraq, which the government justified on security grounds by reference to Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. Some commentators, including current and former Australian officials, argued that Australian involvement reduced rather than enhanced Australian security by increasing the risk of terrorist attacks against Australians.

Introductory reading Michael Wesley, ‘Setting and Securing Australia’s National Interests: The National Interest as Security’, in Ian Marsh (ed.), Australia’s Choices: Options for a Prosperous and Fair Society, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003, pp. 178–91.

Further reading David Lovell (ed.), Asia-Pacific Security: Policy Challenges, Canberra: Asia Pacific Press, 2003. Anthony Burke, In Fear of Security: Australia’s Invasion Anxiety, Sydney: Pluto Press, 2001.

Self-Determination The concept of self-determination was important during the decolonisation process that was undertaken after World War Two. The ‘selves’, in this case, were people in colonies that were accepted as having the right to decide, or determine, their own future. The right to and need for self-determination for former colonies was incorporated into the United Nations Charter in 1951. Most of the former colonies have achieved independence and the question that now arises in the context of self-determination concerns whether ethnically distinct groups within countries can claim a right to self-determination. One of the reasons that this is an

169

Self-Determination issue is that the processes of creating and recognising nations (see national identity) involved imposing boundaries on people who did not always recognise any real commonality with all other people in a nation. The breakdown of the Soviet Union and allied communist countries saw a number of self-determination movements arise. Five nations emerged from Yugoslavia, for example: Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia–Herzegovina, and Slovenia. Those who sought to create these nations pointed to both ethnic difference and a political independence that preceded their incorporation into Yugoslavia. To the extent that they could claim a prior history of political independence, these so-called ‘break-away’ states could rely on the principle that they had some previous political identity that had been denied by a process of occupation. To this extent, they could rely on something like the principle in the UN Charter that recognised that colonised people had a right to self-determination. The issue gets considerably more difficult in the context of ethnically distinct groups that are mixed with other groups and, therefore, have no clear history of some form of political separation. A number of ethnic minorities in existing nations have claimed a right to self-determination on the basis that they do not belong to the nation of which they are formally part. This claim has been made by such groups as the Chechens in Russia, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Basques in Spain and the Ambonese, Acehnese and Papuans in Indonesia. Indonesia granted self-determination to the East Timorese, a process in which the Australian government played an important role. The question of whether a right to self-determination allows for secession (a political breaking away) from an existing nation is significant in contemporary international relations. The UN Charter provides little support for the view that such a right exists, but support for this understanding of the right to self-determination is challenged by those who believe in the existence of authentic communities or nations (central to most forms of nationalism which project a particular national identity for a people). Some pressure is being placed on the UN to change its approach to

170

Self-Determination self-determination in order to recognise the right to selfdetermination for indigenous peoples, but such a move would be perceived as a threat to their territorial integrity by those in many governments throughout the world. Self-determination is extremely significant for many Indigenous Australians. Claims of a right to self-determination on the part of Indigenous Australians derive from their previous occupation of Australia and clear cultural difference from other Australians. Two problems face such claims. The first is that Indigenous Australians are not concentrated in a particular area. This makes it hard for them to claim a particular territory as theirs (as the whole county was theirs). The second problem is that Indigenous Australians do not possess a culture that lends itself to claims that Indigenous Australians had some political independence prior to colonisation. This leads to the question of whether something called internal self-determination is possible and legitimate. Internal selfdetermination, which is what some spokespeople for Indigenous Australians seek, involves a capacity to create a separate governmental structure that would control and make decisions concerning significant aspects of the lives of Indigenous Australians. They do not seek a separate polity but merely seek control over important aspects of the lives of Indigenous Australians, especially the activities that express their particular relationship to the land.

Introductory reading Geoffrey Stokes and Karren Gillen, ‘Self-determination in Aboriginal Politics’, in Paul Boreham, Geoffrey Stokes and Richard Hall (eds), The Politics of Australian Society: Political Issues for the New Century, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2004, pp. 62–78.

Further reading Richard Broome, ‘Towards Self-Determination’, Chapter 11 in Aboriginal Australians: Black Responses to White Dominance, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001, pp. 188–205. Michael Dodson, Assimilation Versus Self-Determination: No Contest, Canberra: ANU North Australian Research Unit, 1996.

171

Separation of powers

Separation of powers The separation of powers is a constitutional measure that rests on the idea that government is better if the different activities of governing are dispersed among different institutions that remain autonomous from each other. Proponents of the idea usually identify three governing activities – making law, implementing law and interpreting law – each of which is primarily assigned to a different branch of government, namely the legislature (or parliament), the executive and the judiciary. The separation of powers should not be confused with the idea of a ‘division of powers’ between central and regional governments that is characteristic of federalism. Under the separation of powers, the independence of each of the branches of government from the others is typically protected by an entrenched constitution, so that none of the separated institutions can legally encroach upon the powers of the others. Separation is also ensured by requirements that members of one branch of government cannot simultaneously serve in another branch and by protecting the tenure of members of one branch from interference by another branch. The separation of powers is an ancient idea; however, it derives its contemporary relevance from the modern preoccupation with limiting the power of government over the people. Political philosophers, such as the authors of the United States Constitution, believed that people could be protected from excessive government power if the actions of an executive had to be sanctioned by laws passed by an independent legislature and could be challenged in independent courts. The modern separation of powers can thus be seen as deriving primarily from liberalism rather than democracy. Democrats sometimes argue that the law ought simply to reflect the will of the people, expressed either directly or through representatives in parliament, rather than reflecting a more complex system of checks and balances between different institutions. In practice, political systems vary in the extent to which they separate powers and in the mechanisms by which separation is achieved. The Australian political system sits between the fuller separation of powers exemplified by the United States of America and the greater blending of powers found in the Westminster traditions

172

Separation of powers of the United Kingdom. At Commonwealth level, the Australian High Court is reasonably fully separated from the other two arms of government. On the other hand, members of the elected executive, the ministry, must be members of the parliament and can only serve for as long as the parliament supports them, meaning that there is no clear separation between the executive and parliament. More formally, the Governor-General represents the monarch as a member of both the executive and parliament. These features of the Australian partial separation of powers have been in place since 1901 and were largely based on prior constitutional practice in the Australian colonies. They are settled features of Australia’s political landscape. Nonetheless, the meaning and importance of the separation of powers regularly arise as issues in debates about Australian political institutions. Discussions about a possible Australian republic in the late 1990s, for example, inevitably broached questions about the autonomy and powers of any future president, particularly one directly elected by the people, and his or her relationship with existing executive and parliamentary institutions. Over the past decade, some parliamentarians and commentators have accused the High Court of stepping beyond interpretation of the law and encroaching on parliament’s power to legislate on issues such as native title. In the same period, a series of interventions by state parliaments to overturn judicial decisions has raised questions about the lack of effective separation of legislature and judiciary in Australian state constitutions.

Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Frameworks for Governing’, Chapter 3 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005, pp. 61–79.

Further reading Haig Patapan, ‘Separation of Powers in Australia’, Australian Journal of Political Science 34 (1999), pp. 391–408. John Uhr, ‘Prime Ministers and Parliament: Patterns of Control’, in Patrick Weller (ed.), Menzies to Keating: The Development of the Australian Prime Ministership, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992, pp. 81–108.

173

Sexuality

Sexuality

(sexual, sexualities) Sexuality refers to an individual’s sexual orientation or sexual preference. In Australian politics, sexuality has been a feature of extensive public debate, policy-making agendas as a result of identity politics, and social movement action. Sexuality is usually invoked as a political concept when identifying difference from the heterosexual majority of the population in the experiences of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Australians. The issue of sexuality was put onto the public agenda in Australia by social movement politics with the emergence of the gay and lesbian movement in the early 1970s. During this period there were two main strands of movement action. The first focussed on gay liberation and sought to challenge and change the structure of society and the general public’s attitude to sexuality; the second strand focussed on law reform and changing legislation to provide recognition and equality for gays and lesbians. The second strand of the movement has been more successful. For example, all Australian states have legislation that has made it unlawful to discriminate against gay men and lesbians on the basis of their sexuality in the areas of employment, public education, accommodation, the provision of goods and services and membership of registered clubs. More recently, same-sex partners of Australian citizens and permanent residents have been given recognition and are entitled to apply for a ‘Partner Class’ of visa, which grants them permanent residency. However, these successes in achieving legal reform do not mean that gays and lesbians have achieved equality in Australia. There are still ongoing policy issues, particularly at the Commonwealth level, where gay and lesbian law reform activists hope to create change. Three main areas of activist attention are Commonwealth superannuation laws and taxation laws, which currently do not recognise same-sex relationships, and the introduction of same-sex marriages (see family). A good example of how recognition of sexuality-based politics has grown in Australia is the support for the annual Sydney-based gay and lesbian Mardi Gras. This event started in 1978 as a protest

174

Social capital event in which many activists were assaulted and arrested. It is now an annual, well-attended and profit-making celebration of sexual difference that raises minimal objection from the broader society. While the majority of Australians now believe that homosexuality should be accepted by society, this differs dramatically by age group and religiosity. Younger Australians are much more tolerant of difference in general, and sexual difference in particular, than older Australians. Some evangelical religious groups remain opposed to sexual difference and campaign against both sexuality-based law reform and the Mardi Gras parade.

Introductory reading Barbara Sullivan, ‘Sexual Citizenship’, in Wayne Hudson and John Kane (eds), Rethinking Australian Citizenship, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 150–7.

Further reading Carol Johnson, ‘Heteronormative Citizenship: The Howard Government’s Views on Gay and Lesbian Issues’, Australian Journal of Political Science 38 (2003), pp. 45–62. Graham Willett, Living out Loud: A History of Gay and Lesbian Activism in Australia, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2000.

Social capital Social capital refers to the interactions between people which establish networks, norms and trust. Theorists of social capital view it as being generated in communities and argue that social capital provides the basis on which Australians ought to build and understand civil society. That is, the connections people have with one another in communities subsequently determine the level of engagement they have with the political world. Robert Putnam, the American political scientist who has popularised the notion of social capital, differentiates between political participation and the creation of social capital. He defines political participation narrowly as relations with political institutions, such as joining political parties or contacting members of parliament about a grievance. Social capital is defined as being underpinned by

175

Social democracy less formal civic engagement between people, which generates civic orientations towards the public sphere and particular communities. This definition suggests that the civic activities are separate from political activities. The emphasis in social capital is on acts undertaken by individuals connected to one another through a shared sense of community. Those concerned with social capital have looked at the density of social networks in which people are involved, the extent to which they are engaged with others in informal, social activities, and their membership of groups and associations. In the Australian context one of the leading advocates for increasing community connections and social capital has been feminist sociologist Eva Cox, who gave the Boyer Lectures on this topic on ABC Radio National in 1995. Debates around social capital have partly emerged out of a fear that Australians have lost trust in government and other essential institutions because the development of social capital and a sense of community have been lost. Some social capital theorists claim that the lack of confidence Australians now have in political institutions and politicians will affect the more general legitimacy of Australian democracy. Proposed solutions to this problem often focus on how social capital might be re-ignited. The solutions usually focus on localised, small-scale community projects. Government is not seen as part of the solution except insofar as it provides funding or resources to allow these projects to get off the ground.

Introductory reading Eva Cox, A Truly Civil Society, Sydney: ABC Books, 1995.

Further reading David Halpern, Social Capital, Cambridge: Polity, 2005. Ian Winter (ed.), Social Capital and Public Policy in Australia, Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2000.

Social democracy

(social democratic, social democrats) Social democracy emerged as a political ideology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries among supporters of Marxism,

176

Social democracy who believed that the change to a socialist society could be achieved through democratic and evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, means. It emphasises a program of gradual legislative reform of the capitalist system in order to make it more equitable and humane. Social democracy is also used to refer to a distinctive type of democratic political system that is contrasted to democracies underpinned by liberalism. This includes countries with strong, redistributive welfare states such as Scandinavian and some other northern European countries. Social democratic political parties are a feature of many democratic countries, and include the Labor Party in Australia. Parties such as the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, the German Social Democratic Party, the New Zealand Labour Party and the Canadian New Democratic Party have all stood in elections on political platforms that included policies such as protection of workers under labour and industrial relations laws, public ownership of major industries and a strong welfare state. Over the last ten years or so, most social democratic parties have distanced themselves from socialist-style economics and socialism in general. Social democrats are now less likely to see that their aspirations cannot be met in a capitalist market economy. Most social democratic parties have adopted policies of the centrist ‘third way’ which supports a largely deregulated economy and emphasises equality of opportunity, rather than of outcomes, as the standard for society. Modern social democrats have also broadened their social goals to encompass social movement emphases on feminism, environmentalism and multiculturalism. Historically, social democratic parties have had strong associations with trade unions, demonstrated through a commitment to fair industrial relations systems. In some countries, such as the United Kingdom, the shift to third way politics has weakened or dissolved the formal relationship between the Labour Party and unions. Unions are still formally recognised within the Australian Labor Party’s organisational structure, but there has been much recent public debate suggesting the need for a formal separation between Labor and the unions. A number of the policy ideas advocated by social democrats have endured in the countries in which they were implemented, such as progressive income tax and publicly funded health care. Other

177

Social movement traditional social democratic policy ideas have since been overturned, some by social democratic governments themselves. For example, free university education in Australia was introduced by the Whitlam Labor government in the early 1970s, while university fees through the Higher Education Contribution Scheme were introduced by the Hawke–Keating Labor government in 1988. Social democrats have, for the most part, also abandoned public ownership and have fully or partly privatised state-owned industry and services. In Australia, this move to privatisation has included the national airline, Qantas, and the national bank, the Commonwealth Bank. Some commentators argue that the shift in thinking by social democrats to third way ideas has been inevitably shaped by the dominance of economic rationalism. Economic globalisation has encouraged the spread of these third way ideas from one country to another. Supporters of the third way often present it as giving social democratic parties like the Labor Party the platform to build support among aspirational voters who are not attracted to traditional social democratic ideals (see also aspiration).

Introductory reading Tim Battin, ‘The Australian Labor Party and the Third Way’, in Paul Boreham, Geoffrey Stokes and Richard Hall (eds), The Politics of Australian Society: Political Issues for the New Century, second edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2004, pp. 37–50.

Further reading Tim Battin and Graham Maddox (eds), Socialism in Contemporary Australia, Melbourne: Addison Wesley Longman, 1996. Dennis Glover and Glenn Patmore (eds), New Voices for Social Democracy: Labor Essays 1999–2000, Sydney: Pluto Press, 1999.

Social movement (social movements)

Social movements come into being, and to a large part exist, outside of formal political institutions. They use direct forms of political action such as marches, demonstrations, protests and sit-ins as their

178

Social movement methods for creating social and political change. Most social movements are underpinned by a belief in the use of non-violent methods to create social and political change. This belief sets them apart from participants in violent revolution, terrorism and civil war. Violence does sometime occur as a side-effect of social movement actions, such as protests, because a major tenet of social movements is to disrupt power and to draw attention to the conflict between the movement’s goals of change and existing political institutions. For example, there is sometimes confrontation between police and protesters at demonstrations. Social movements lack an overarching institutional structure and exist as loose coalitions of groups, organisations and individuals. For example, we might talk about ‘the environment movement’, whose participants include individual recyclers, organised groups like the Australian Conservation Foundation, localised Landcare groups and the Australian Greens Party. Social movements aim to change fundamental social values. This means that they are equally concerned with changing the consciousness of participants as they are with influencing government policy. Thus, it is just as important to the existence of the green movement that its participants share a commitment to green-based values as it is that government institutes pro-environmental policies. An understanding of the processes of social change is important to an evaluation of recent social movements in Australia. Movements often emerge during times of political and social upheaval. Movements can be instrumental in presenting opportunities for innovative ways of re-ordering society and political institutions. Movements can work together with governments to shape new political and social outlooks. For example, the Australian labour movement emerged in the late nineteenth century, when Australians were renegotiating their political and social structures. More recently, the emergence of the environment, women’s, Indigenous and gay and lesbian movements grew in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when rapid social and political change was happening in many developed, liberal democratic countries (see also democracy). The activities of these movements were interwoven with a shift in social attitudes on issues such as: limitations on the economic uses of nature, institutionalising equality between men and women, creating equal rights

179

Socialism and opportunities for Indigenous Australians, and the acceptance of gays and lesbians. A social movement newly active in Australia is the anti-globalisation movement, which is based on anti-corporate and anti-capitalist values. It has brought together a coalition of groups such as environmental groups, unions, peace groups and social justice-oriented community organisations. The difference between social movements and political parties and interest groups is that social movements are not organisations. Social movements are networks of interactions which may include formal organisations; but a single organisation ought not to be studied and labelled as the social movement. It is the existence of a network that indicates the existence of a movement for change. Social movements are also more than a single protest event. Social movement analysts interpret protest events as part of the broad cycle of movement activity. A one-off community-based protest over the development of a local park, for example, ought not to be considered as social movement activity unless it is seen to develop the participants’ sense of collective identity with a wider movement in the longer term.

Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Movements for Change’, Chapter 12 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005, pp. 343–78.

Further reading Verity Burgmann, Power, Profit and Protest, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003. Donatella Della Porta and Mario Diani, Social Movements: An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.

Socialism

(socialist, socialists) The word socialism has been used to refer to at least two distinctive forms of political thought. Crucial to understanding these two forms of socialism is their different reasons for believing that people are social. All socialists believe that people are fundamentally social,

180

Socialism but they understand this sociality (or socialness) in different ways. Another aspect of the two forms of socialism is the explanations that their adherents provide to explain why so many people in contemporary Australian society are selfish. While some people use the word socialist to refer to anyone who thinks of people as social, some appreciation of the differences between the two principal forms of socialism might prove useful. One type of socialist believes that normal people have deep feelings of empathy and care for all others, and not just for those others who meet certain of their needs or with whom they have developed particular bonds (as an individualist might believe). This feeling for others assumes that people are naturally cooperative and have feelings that tie them to communities. This sort of socialist believes that many Australians are selfish, or act selfishly, because their natural social feelings are inhibited and perverted as a result of their membership of a capitalist, individualistic society. The principal goal of forms of social and political organisation for these socialists is to allow people to develop fully their empathic and communal natures. Socialists of this type are less likely to promote political revolution than the other type of socialist, because the violence involved in a political revolution does not express empathy and care for others. Significant reform is required, however, to economic and social systems if people are to express and live out their feelings of empathy and care. An early example of this form of socialism in Australian history was William Lane’s attempt to lead a group of Australians to create a socialist community in Paraguay. In other countries, this form of socialism is often expressed through Christian socialist movements and parties. The other form of socialism, commonly referred to as Marxism, has a different account of human sociality (or socialness). For these socialists, people are social because they are always parts of society. In the first instance, people are born into a group that they rely upon for their survival. They learn particular languages that function both as a necessary means for thinking and for interacting effectively with others. People make sense of their feelings as a result of their socialisation. They attain an identity, which comes later, as a result of finding a place in society. Everything about people, from this

181

Socialism perspective, reflects the society in which they find themselves. Most Australians are selfish because they are socialised into being selfish. People will be empathetic and care for others, from this perspective, if they are socialised to do so. There is no natural source of these feelings. The way that people have been trained will make most of them, especially ‘successful’ people, resistant to any radical change to society. Revolution then becomes the only way to achieve a transition from a capitalist to a socialist society. This revolution has to be led by the working class and its organisations because the way that this class labours will make it aware of its common interests against capitalism. This awareness means that the workers and their organisations can lead the subsequent transition to a communist society. Both forms of socialism have been influential at times in the Labor Party. The first form has been influential in its rejection of revolution and use of democratic processes to achieve a society in which people’s natural sociality could be enabled. This idea is often referred to as democratic socialism. The second form has been influential in Labor’s concern with industrial democracy and the promotion of the interests of workers through civilising capitalism. Labor adopted a socialist objective in 1921, which committed the party to ending the exploitation of workers through public ownership of major industries. This objective has been modified several times since and today plays almost no role in guiding the Labor Party. There are a range of reasons why the socialist objective is no longer central to the Labor Party’s ideology and political practice. These include the limitations on the powers of the Commonwealth government in the Australian Constitution, the Labor Party’s attempts to attract middle class voters and the conservatism of the Australian working class. The demise of the Soviet Union has meant that socialism has even less purchase in Australian society and politics than it once had. Socialism has largely become a pejorative in Australian society and is used to dismiss ideas of greater cooperation and increased socio-economic equality among Australians.

Introductory reading Graham Maddox, ‘Political Ideas and Doctrines’, Chapter 11 in Australian Democracy in Theory and Practice, fourth edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2000, pp. 407–11.

182

Spin Further reading Tim Battin and Graham Maddox (eds), Socialism in Contemporary Australia, Melbourne: Addison Wesley Longman, 1996. Mathew Festenstein and Michael Kenny, ‘Socialism’, Chapter 4 in Political Ideologies: A Reader and Guide, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 175–256.

Spin Spin refers to concerted efforts by governments or other actors to establish a particular interpretation of political events as accepted wisdom among a particular audience. It also refers to the content of particular efforts to manage perceptions in this coordinated way. The media advisers, speech writers, public relations officers, advertisers and marketers who undertake these efforts professionally are often called ‘spin doctors’. Spin is almost always used in a negative way to indicate that the persuasive efforts and content tagged with the label should be mistrusted. To call something ‘spin’ might well itself be spin. The words ‘spin’ and ‘spin doctors’ first came to prominence in discussions of United States politics in the mid-1980s and became common terms in Australian political commentary a decade later. The efforts of Australian governments to massage the news have dramatically increased since World War One, when the prime minister first appointed a press secretary to his staff. By the end of the twentieth century, the Commonwealth ministry had forty to fifty media advisers working for it and the total number of media and public relations staff across Australian governments and public sectors was estimated at about 4000. Apart from media advisers to individual ministers, governments have established centralised media units that monitor media stories and feed favourable material to journalists, as well as bodies to coordinate government information and publicity activities. Most public sector agencies have public affairs units that can come under direction from ministerial offices to promote a particular interpretation of policy or events. Over the past decade, the Commonwealth government has spent millions of dollars on advertising policy proposals such as taxation change, private health insurance subsidies and industrial relations reform, expenditure that tends to increase in pre-election periods.

183

Spin Government efforts to influence interpretations of political affairs go back to ancient times. What seems to underlie much contemporary concern about spin is the idea that the current size and reach of the so-called ‘public relations state’ in countries like Australia give governments power to manipulate public opinion while operating within a liberal democratic framework (see also democracy). Other voices are free to speak out but government propaganda will overwhelm them almost as effectively as in an authoritarian state. A less-sweeping criticism of government spin is that it uses public money to advance the interests of the governing party, rather than carrying out the legitimate task of providing policy information. In an era of continuous election campaigning, this provides the government with a huge advantage over its opponents. While government spin can be seen as an attempt to manipulate the news media, and through them the public, it is also arguably in part a response to the power of the media to shape perceptions of governments and policies. The most notoriously spin-oriented government in a Westminster-style system, that of Britain’s Tony Blair, has been driven by a fear that the media could destroy his government. Similar fears can be found in Australia, particularly within the ministerial ranks in states dominated by a few opinionated media outlets. As more political journalists have abandoned news reporting in favour of commentary and opinion, the pressure on governments to ensure favourable media commentary has increased.

Introductory reading Ian Ward, ‘Media Power’, in John Summers, Dennis Woodward and Andrew Parkin (eds), Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia, seventh edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2002, pp. 409–12.

Further reading Geoffrey Craig, The Media, Politics and Public Life, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003. Ian Ward, ‘An Australian PR State?’, Australian Journal of Communication 30 (2003), pp. 25–42.

184

Terrorism

Tt Terrorism (terrorist)

Terrorism is a strategy for achieving political and other goals by the use or threat of unlawful violence to create fear and disruption among a targeted set of political actors. By demonstrating that they can kill, injure and abduct people, or damage and disrupt infrastructure, those who use terrorism hope to make it too costly for other relevant political actors to ignore or reject their goals. The political impact of terrorism relies on an understanding that the real target of terrorism is not those who are directly harmed by terrorist acts but others whom the terrorists wish to coerce into changing their behaviour. These targets will vary according to the goals of the terrorists, and might include governments, political parties, businesses, trade unions, community groups, or members of particular communities. Thus although specific terrorist acts rely on unpredictability for part of their effect, successful terrorist acts cannot be random events. Their meaning must be understood by their targets. The killing of an aid worker, for example, must be understood by others in that aid organisation to mean that they should stop operating in a particular area, or in a particular way, or they will face more attacks. Political scientists have attempted to classify the main types of terrorist groups according to their motivations. Irredentist terrorism, for example, is pursued by organisations supporting the claims of a particular ethnic group for political or territorial rights. The Tamil Tiger group in Sri Lanka is one example. Millenarian or revolutionary terrorism, by contrast, is motivated to bring about radical change to the whole socio-economic and political structure of

185

Terrorism one or more countries. The Italian Red Brigades operating in the 1960s and 1970s pursued such a goal as, more recently, did the terrorists who attacked the Bali tourist nightclubs in the 2000s. More specific ideological terrorism targets particular policies or institutions, as in the case of attacks by Christian fundamentalists on abortion clinics and their staff in the United States. In some cases, groups using terrorism seem to fit more than one category. Terrorist groups operating in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, for example, have combined elements of irredentist and millenarian motivations. Terrorism is commonly associated with underground fringe groups; however, those who have used, sponsored and supported terrorism have been as diverse as its targets. State-sponsored terrorism, for example, is undertaken by terrorists employed or supported by governments or specific government agencies to weaken domestic and international opposition, or to undermine or support governments in other countries. The sinking by French agents of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand in 1985 provides an example from the Pacific region. Terrorist acts have been uncommon in recent Australian history, although frontier relations between Indigenous and white Australians from 1788 to at least the 1930s included many acts that would fit the definition given above. Australia became preoccupied with terrorism largely as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, which many in Australia interpreted as being part of a global threat to western liberal democracy (see also democracy). In response, the Australian government introduced or toughened a range of security measures. These circumstances have produced two politically important dilemmas in Australia, which usually emerge when liberal democratic regimes respond to terrorism. First, the tightening of security laws inevitably restricts rights such as freedom of speech, movement and association that are commonly seen as central to the liberalism and democracy that the government wants to defend against terrorists. Second, to the extent that these laws and their enforcement are experienced as targeting particular groups, such as the Australian Muslim community, the legitimacy of the government and support for Australian liberal democracy within that community may decline.

186

Think tank Introductory reading Megan Davis, Terrorism, Sydney: Legal Information Access Centre, 2003.

Further reading Ben Golder and George Williams, ‘What is “Terrorism”? Problems of Legal Definition’, UNSW Law Journal 27 (2004), pp. 270–95. Jenny Hocking, Terror Laws: ASIO, Counter Terrorism and the Threat to Democracy, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2004.

Think tank (think tanks)

Think tanks are independent, non-government organisations that conduct strategic research with the intention of influencing public opinion and policy outcomes. There are about twenty think tanks active in Australia. They range in ideology, size, resources and influence. Think tanks come from a variety of ideological backgrounds, but since the 1970s conservative think tanks that promote the values of neo-liberalism have come to dominate over other types of think tanks. Two high-profile Australian conservative think tanks are the Centre for Independent Studies and the Institute of Public Affairs. They are funded by publication subscriptions, membership and private donations. They both publish journals, have paid research staff, and through their staff regularly contribute opinion pieces in major newspapers. These two conservative think tanks have been influential, publishing strategic research and formulating policy agendas concerned with economic rationalism, privatisation, deregulation, labour market reform and smaller government. There are also progressive think tanks such as the Evatt Foundation, established in 1979, and The Australia Institute, founded in 1994. In general these think tanks have significantly fewer resources to conduct research. Throughout the 1990s, the Evatt Foundation was an influential research organisation. It published research reports such as the annual State of the States, which evaluated the performance of state government on a number of environmental, social and economic measures. As a primarily union-funded think

187

Third sector tank, the Evatt Foundation has now found it difficult to attract continued funding to undertake and publish research. While the organisation still exists, it no longer has paid staff undertaking research and is rarely visible in media commentary. The Australia Institute has become increasingly successful in agenda setting with its research on environmental issues such as climate change and individual overconsumption. In recent years there has been the emergence of a type of think tank that claims to be neither conservative nor progressive and increasingly focusses on issues of foreign policy, terrorism and security. This includes high-profile think tanks such as the Lowy Institute and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Both these organisations have a high media profile. Their spokespeople are regularly invited to comment on news and current affairs and write opinion pieces in major newspapers. They also regularly conduct seminars and events with high-profile speakers in their aim to influence elite and public opinion on Australian foreign policy and to influence government policy-making.

Introductory reading Damian Cahill, ‘Funding the ideological struggle’, Overland 168 (2002), pp. 21–6.

Further reading Ian Marsh, ‘Gaps in Policy-Making Capacities: Interest Groups, Social Movements, Think Tanks and the Media’, in Michael Keating, John Wanna and Patrick Weller (eds), Institutions on the Edge? Capacity for Governance, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2000, pp. 178–204. Philip Mendes, ‘Australian Neoliberal Think Tanks and the Backlash Against the Welfare State’, Journal of Australian Political Economy 51 (2003), pp. 29–56.

Third sector The ‘third sector’ is often also known as the non-government sector, the community sector, the non-profit sector and the voluntary sector. All of these sectors of activity can be similarly defined as

188

Third sector consisting of organisations that are formed and sustained by groups of people acting voluntarily. Members do not seek personal profit but seek to provide benefits for themselves or others by acting collectively to provide goods or services that they cannot provide on their own. The benefit may be to provide opportunities for worship, to advance a cause, to organise games, to set and maintain standards within a profession, to strengthen members’ position in a labour or product market, to provide services that are elsewhere unaffordable, to help the sick, to educate children, to empower the disadvantaged and so on. Many third sector organisations have forms of democratic control. Where membership involves a material benefit, as is the case in social clubs and credit unions, the benefit gained by members is proportionate to their use of the organisation. These features distinguish the third sector from profit-driven private sector organisations. In the private sector the owners or investors receive a dividend and the right to exercise control proportionate to the level of their investment. The numbers and scale of third sector organisations have grown in the post-war period. It is estimated that there are 700,000 third sector organisations and groups in Australia; but only 34,000 employ staff. Different types of third sector organisations have different capacities to generate funds by charging fees for membership or services, by fund-raising, or by gaining government grants. The third sector in Australia is dominated by community, health and education serviceproviding organisations, which derive the majority of their income from government grants. Sport and recreation organisations form another important category, in that they employ many staff and have a very high overall income generation. Most of their funding comes from the fees charged for service; comparatively little is sourced from government or fund-raising. Religious and community service organisations (of which many are overseas aid organisations) are the only third sector organisations that raise a large proportion of their income from fund-raising. Otherwise fund-raising from the general public and philanthropy in general are not major sources of income for Australian third sector organisations. Third sector organisations that engage explicitly in the political process are known as interest groups or pressure groups.

189

Trade Introductory reading Mark Lyons, Third Sector, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001.

Further reading Kevin Brown, Rhetorics of Welfare: Uncertainty, Choice and Voluntary Associations, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000. Bronwen Dalton and Mark Lyons, Representing the Disadvantaged in Australian Politics: The Role of Advocacy Organisations, Canberra: Democratic Audit of Australia, Australian National University, 2005.

Trade Trade refers to the economic exchange of goods and services between entities. Although these entities include individuals, groups and businesses, the politically most important trade is that between countries, which export goods and services produced within their borders and import goods and services produced in other countries. Countries vary in the resources they contain and the efficiency with which they can produce particular goods and services. These socalled comparative advantages in the production of different goods and services make it attractive for countries to trade with each other. Imports allow countries to access cheaper goods and services, while exports bring more income to the producers of those goods and services. While trade is recognised as a benefit overall, not everyone benefits from particular patterns of imports and exports. Cheaper imports threaten the livelihood of competing domestic producers of goods and services, while international demand for particular exports increases the price of those goods and services for domestic consumers. These features of trade make it a difficult political problem for governments. Since governments control their country’s borders, they must decide what sort of trade, both generally and with regard to specific goods and services, they will allow. They might pursue general free trade policies allowing unrestricted trade between their country and others. They may pursue general policies to protect domestic industries by restricting imports. They may restrict the export of goods and services. Within any of these policy frameworks,

190

Trade exceptions may be made for particular industries. For example, governments may pursue a general free trade policy but make exceptions for politically sensitive agricultural industries by imposing tough quarantine or quality restrictions on international competitors. As this example suggests, governments often face serious competing pressures, both domestic and international, over their trade policies. Domestically, some economic interest groups will favour free trade and others oppose it. Voters who suffer from the effects of trade policies may successfully take out their anger on government members of parliament. The government may impose tariffs on imports as a form of taxation because it needs to raise revenue. Governments of other countries and international bodies will pressure governments to adopt particular trade policies. The World Trade Organisation (WTO), for example, has a series of institutional mechanisms to push member countries towards free trade policies. In Australia, these competing pressures were felt as early as the mid-nineteenth century. The Victorian colonial government, for example, used tariffs to protect grain farmers and manufacturing workers, as well as to raise revenue, while in New South Wales free trade policies dominated and revenue needs were more easily met through land and income taxes. The trade issue was a barrier to the federation of the colonies, a problem eventually resolved by the insertion of a clause guaranteeing free trade between the states into the Constitution. Labor was initially neutral on the trade issue (some workers benefiting from free trade, others from protection) but grew to see protection as a way of advancing workers’ wages and conditions. Until 1909 the non-Labor side of politics was split between Free Trade and Protectionist factions. The compromise between these factions saw protection become a key plank of Australian public policy regardless of who governed until the 1970s, when the Whitlam Labor government substantially cut tariffs. The Hawke and Keating Labor governments further shifted trade policy towards the goal of free trade and the Howard Liberal–National government continued this course. This new free trade bipartisanship has not ended the trade controversy in Australian politics. Part of the controversy centres on whether or not Australia should pursue bilateral trade agreements, such as the 2004 Free Trade Agreement between the United States

191

Tradition and Australia, or pursue broader multilateral agreements. Some of the controversy surrounds the effects of free trade agreements on certain Australian industries and on domestic public policies. Some critics see free trade as undermining Australian sovereignty. Some of the controversy is globally focussed. Many opponents of free trade policies and the WTO argue that they are part of a neo-colonialism that benefits the richer and more powerful parts of the world, while supporters argue that protection is detrimental to poor countries and that free trade is a positive aspect of globalisation for all participating countries.

Introductory reading Alan Fenna, ‘Australia in the World Economy: Trade and Industry Policy’, Chapter 9 in Australian Public Policy, second edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2004, pp. 206–43.

Further reading Ann Capling, All the Way with the USA: Australia, the US and Free Trade, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2004. Paul Kelly, The End of Certainty, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1992.

Tradition

(traditional, traditionally, traditions) A tradition is a set of customs or practices that has been handed down from generation to generation. This set of customs and practices express particular values and ideals and is manifested in social and political institutions and in the histories that are used to justify and explain those customs and practices. The crucial characteristic of a tradition is its persistence over an extended period of time. Some thinkers, such as the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, believe that ‘traditions’ refers to rigidly followed practices and ‘customs’ refers to practices that are more flexible and open to change. This distinction between practices that are open to change and those that are not is also manifested in an opposition that is sometimes made between traditionalism and tradition. Traditionalism is the valuing of customs simply because they have always been followed.

192

Tradition Those who support traditions, rather than traditionalism, support them because of their intrinsic usefulness and view them as open to modification in light of changed circumstances. A belief in the importance of and need to maintain traditions is common to conservative thinkers. Liberals are wary of traditions because they believe that they may restrict individual freedom. Socialists and other Radicals reject traditions because they prevent fundamental change and because they serve and reflect the interests of the dominant group or class in a society. An example of these differences can be found in views concerning traditional roles in the family, especially for women and men. Conservatives will tend to defend certain roles as being proper ones for women and men on the basis that these roles are traditional. Liberals will reject them to the extent that they inhibit personal choice and freedom. Socialists and other radicals will reject them as inhibiting change and maintaining male dominance. A distinction commonly accepted by those in modern societies, like Australia, is between traditional and modern societies. Traditional societies, in this distinction, follow previous customs or practices because they have always been followed. People in traditional societies cannot change their customs or practices, both because this would disrupt society and because they do not think of themselves, as individualists do, as people who can choose whether or not to follow those customs or practices. Indigenous Australians are referred to as having had a traditional society and to have traditions of land tenure different from those in western societies. Modern societies, in this distinction, follow particular practices because they are rational or efficient. Customs or practices can be changed when they can be recognised as needing to be changed. Individuals can choose to follow customs or common practices, but feel free not to do so if they believe that to do so would not be in their interests or in the interests of society generally. While traditions are often associated with societies, subgroups within society also manifest traditions. People speak of religious traditions and mean the particular customs, practices, values, ideals and institutions that have been adopted throughout the history of particular religions. We can speak of political traditions and mean those customs and practices that have long been followed.

193

Treaty The (constitutional) conventions that have been used in Australian politics can be taken to manifest customary or traditional behaviour (though the fact that they can be and have been ignored means they may not be traditions, and may be the sort of flexible customs to which Hobsbawm refers). Australia can certainly be understood as having a tradition of parliamentary democracy (see also parliament).

Introductory reading John Hutchinson, ‘Re-Interpreting Cultural Nationalism’, The Australian Journal of Politics and History 45 (1999), pp. 392–407.

Further reading Davis McCaughey, Tradition and Dissent, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997. Gary Smith and David Lowe, ‘Howard, Downer and the Liberals’ Realist Tradition’, The Australian Journal of Politics and History 51 (2005), pp. 459–72.

Treaty (treaties)

A treaty is a binding agreement. In international relations, treaties are made between states and ratified by international organisations as part of international law. Treaties are called by a variety of other names, such as international agreements, protocols, covenants and conventions. The rules are the same regardless of what a treaty is called. Treaties can be broadly compared to contracts, in that both are means for willing parties assuming obligations among themselves and a party that fails to live up to its obligations can be held legally liable. Australia is signatory to a range of international treaties. Treaties are bilateral when there are two signatories; for example, Australia and East Timor have entered into the Timor Sea Treaty. A multilateral treaty exists when there are three or more signatories; for example, Australia has signed United Nations treaties that include most other

194

Treaty countries. Australia’s approach to bilateral and multilateral treaties reflects its perceptions of its role in the world, and helps to shape its priorities in foreign policy-making. For example, the 1951 ANZUS agreement between the United States, Australia and New Zealand committed the member countries to consult with one another in the event of an act of war or invasion, which means that a risk to Australia’s security could potentially involve United States support. The Commonwealth government uses the external affairs power in the Australian Constitution to ratify multilateral treaties and then to pass domestic laws to implement the terms of those treaties. One such example of this process was ratification of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1975, followed by the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975, which implemented the terms of the treaty in Australia. In the 1982 Koowarta case, the High Court found that where the Commonwealth government had passed laws in accordance with its treaty obligations, those laws override state government laws. In the Koowarta case, this meant that the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act could be used to overturn the Queensland government’s refusal on race-based grounds to sell a pastoral lease to an Indigenous group. Another consequence of ratifying such treaties is that the Australian government is required to lodge regular reports and attend meetings with the United Nations committees overseeing signatory nations’ compliance with treaties. The relevant committee on race issues is the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, to which Australia is required to report every two years. Treaties between colonisers and indigenous peoples are sometimes created and form an important part of contemporary political debate. These treaties are considered internationally to be primarily part of a nation’s domestic law. In countries such as New Zealand and Canada, treaties have allowed indigenous people to exert a degree of sovereignty or self-determination. There is not a similar treaty in Australia between the government and Indigenous Australians. Some activist Indigenous Australians have campaigned for a treaty between black and white Australians as a precursor to reconciliation between the two groups.

195

Treaty Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Australia in the World’, Chapter 6 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005, pp. 149–76.

Further reading Sean Brennan, Larissa Behrendt, Lisa Strelein and George Williams, Treaty, Sydney: Federation Press, 2005. Martin Flynn, Human Rights in Australia: Treaties, Statutes and Cases, Sydney: Lexisnexis Butterworths, 2003.

196

Union

Uu Union

(unionism, unions) In Australian political discussion, union is usually shorthand for trade union, an organisation formed to represent workers. Individual unions, such as the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, represent workers doing different jobs in the same type of industry. Others, such as the Teachers’ Federation, cover people engaged in the same type of employment, in this case teaching. In Australia, the peak union body is the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). In many countries, unions have the status of a legal entity and can negotiate with employers to improve wages and working conditions for the workers they represent. This process is known as collective bargaining over facets of working life that need to be agreed upon by both employers and workers, such as wages, working hours and other terms and conditions of employment. In many situations, unions do not have legal rights to collective bargaining and workers may threaten strikes or other collective action to pressure employers to negotiate. Unions may also engage with other broader political or social movements in campaigns over common interests. In some countries, including Australia, unions are closely aligned with social democratic political parties, like the Australian Labor Party. Unions often use their organisational strength to advocate for social policies and legislation, such as minimum wage policies, that will be positive for their members or for workers in general. Unions have had a long history of collective action and political involvement. The first unions formed in Australia in the 1830s were craft unions for shipbuilders and cabinetmakers. The 1850s heralded

197

Union a period of major union activity through campaigns for an eighthour working day. A series of strikes by shearers and miners in the 1890s demonstrated to the growing union movement a need for industrial legislation that represented their interests. The Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission was established in 1904 to settle industrial disputes and determine awards covering wages and conditions. Also in 1904 the first union-backed Commonwealth Labor Party government was established. The Commission’s major decision was to establish the minimum wage in 1907, commonly known as the Harvester award, that influenced wage decisions for the rest of the century. More recently, unions played a significant policy-making role during the Labor Commonwealth government between 1983 and 1996. During this time Accords were reached between the government and unions and new industrial laws were introduced that covered award conditions such as compulsory superannuation, and maternity and family leave. Unions themselves restructured, with about 300 unions amalgamating into 20 broad-ranging unions that covered many jobs and industries. The Accords also led to enterprise bargaining at the sites of workplaces rather than unions negotiating wages and conditions across whole industries. There has been a changed environment for unions in recent years, which has limited their effectiveness as representatives of workers. First, union membership has declined from a high in the early 1980s of approximately fifty per cent of the workforce being members of a union to about twenty-five per cent in the early twenty-first century. Second, unions have had to deal with a hostile political environment at the Commonwealth level, as unions do not have the same Accord relationship with Liberal–National Coalition governments. Third, the changing nature of the workforce has affected union strength and membership. Traditionally unionised areas of manual work are in decline, being replaced by service industries that are less unionised. There has also been an increase in parttime and casualised work, which makes it harder for unions to sign up and retain members. The main response by unions has been to increasingly focus not just on representing members but on organising members within workplaces to renew a level of participation and ownership of activism by union members. Unions have also

198

Utilitarianism renewed their focus on community-based campaigns, such as educating workers about their industrial rights; as well as organising new coalitions with other social movement organisations, such as the anti-globalisation movement and the environment movement.

Introductory reading Bill Harley, ‘The Decentralisation of Industrial Relations’, in Paul Boreham, Geoffrey Stokes and Richard Hall (eds), The Politics of Australian Society: Political Issues for the New Century, second edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2004, pp. 278–95.

Further reading Michael Crosby, Power at Work: Rebuilding the Australian Union Movement, Sydney: Federation Press, 2005. Bradon Ellem, Raymond Markey and John Shields (eds), Peak Unions in Australia: Origins, Purpose, Power, Agency, Sydney: Federation Press, 2004.

Utilitarianism (utilitarian)

Utilitarianism is generally understood as a form of liberal theory and has often been claimed to be the form of political thought that has been most influential in Australian social and political life. The most important and influential utilitarian thinker was the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Bentham argued that the behaviour of human beings was governed by two drives: to maximise pleasure and to minimise pain. Importantly, he viewed pleasure and pain as quantities that could be measured. We speak of greater or lesser pleasure and pain because different experiences provide different amounts of stimulation to our pleasure and pain receptors. Bentham believed that people choose actions because of a calculation as to the amount of pleasure or pain that we think we will gain from an action or series of actions. Bentham referred to this as felicific calculus. In Bentham’s theory, we will choose activities that give us greater pleasure over those that give us less pleasure. We will work harder

199

Utilitarianism to avoid activities that give us more pain than we will work to avoid those that give us less pain. We can decide to accept an amount of pain in the short term, in this theory, if we believe that this pain will be outweighed by the pleasure that we will gain in the long term. So we may suffer the pain of learning the piano because of the pleasure that we will receive when we learn to play well and when others praise us for being good pianists. When it comes to governing a society, Bentham argued, those in positions of political authority should calculate the amount of pleasure and pain that might accrue to members of society when taken as a whole (that is, governments were to seek to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number). Everyone was counted equally in this calculation. The fact that some people might be caused significant pain as a result of a government policy, however, was not sufficient to justify abandoning that policy, if many other people were caused sufficient happiness to counter-weigh the pain that was caused to some people. Other liberals, who argued that utilitarianism did not protect individual rights, rejected utilitarianism. They argued that it was at least theoretically possible to justify killing or enslaving some people if that made everyone else sufficiently well off to justify this killing or enslavement. Utilitarianism could lead to a society in which basic human rights were ignored without this undermining the claim that a society was utilitarian. This opposition between individual rights and utility was most recently manifested in Australian society with respect to antiterrorism legislation introduced by the Howard government. This legislation, which involved curtailing people’s individual rights, was justified on the grounds that it made Australian society more secure (and, therefore, promoted a sufficient amount of happiness to justify the distress caused to some people by the curtailment of their individual rights). This abandoning of the defence of individual rights in favour of social utility was taken by some people to reflect a basic flaw in utilitarian thinking. Bentham’s theories have also been criticised, including by one of his best-known British followers, John Stuart Mill, for failing to differentiate between different types of pleasure. Mill was a social liberal who argued that there were higher and lower pleasures and that it

200

Utilitarianism was the pursuit of higher pleasures that distinguished people from animals. Calculations that simply took into account the quantity, and not the quality, of pleasures were invalid, in Mill’s view, and a more subtle form of calculation was required to take account of the quality of pleasures. Australia has been called a utilitarian and even a Benthamite society, because Australians have tended to place greater emphasis on leisure time and pleasure-giving activities over working. An outdoor sports, bush and beach culture is taken to reflect a preoccupation with maximising pleasure. An apparent lack of interest in high arts, such as literature, the visual arts, opera and classical music, and a preference for sporting spectacles, barbecues and beach life resulted in the view that Australia was not simply utilitarian but Benthamite.

Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Equality’, Chapter 5 in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 108–14.

Further reading Hugh Collins, ‘Political Ideology in Australia: The Distinctiveness of a Benthamite Society’, in Stephen Graubard (ed.), Australia: The Daedalus Symposium, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1985, pp. 147–70. Wendy Donner, ‘Mill’s Utilitarianism’, in John Skorupski (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Mill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998, pp. 255–92.

201

Values

Vv Values

(value, valued) In its strictly economic use, value refers to the monetary worth of a good or service. In the context of politics, values refers to the importance that people attach to particular personal and social characteristics, activities, goals and even ways of life and to the reasons that some characteristics, activities, goals and ways of life are preferred (that is, valued) over others. Values, then, reflect people’s moral or ethical orientations or commitments. Individualists, for example, value personal autonomy and do so because they believe that the individual is the primary social and political unit. Collectivists, on the other hand, value enhancement of the community because they believe that groups or communities are the primary social and political units. Asian leaders articulated a version of this division between individualists and collectivists by supporting recent claims by Lee Kuan Yew, the former Singaporean Prime Minister, that there was a difference in values between people in their countries and those in western countries, such as Australia. These leaders argued that this meant a set of western standards and principles, especially with respect to the need for political rights and democratic processes, should not apply to their countries. They asserted the existence of a set of ‘Asian values’ to argue that their countries should be built around different political relationships from those found in western countries. Asian values, in this account, gave priority to the community over the individual, centred social life around the family and legitimised social hierarchies and deference to those in superior positions.

202

Values One manifestation of the effect of different values on Australian politics is found in the opposition between those who promote economic growth and those who promote ecological sustainability. Those who support economic growth do so, in part, because they believe that maintaining high levels of employment is the most important, or valuable, objective that governments can pursue no matter what its environmental effects are. Those who favour ecological sustainability do so, in part, because they believe that preserving the natural environment is the most important objective that governments can pursue no matter what its economic effects are. The opposition between those who support economic growth and those who support ecological sustainability indicates that Australians have different values, which partly derive from different processes of socialisation. These differences in their values are important for their attitudes to political parties and to the political system itself. Australians also overwhelmingly share certain values, such as their belief in individual rights and representative democratic processes, which suggests that there are common elements to the socialisation processes to which they have been and are exposed. Common values are important for the maintenance of community and social and political stability. This is one of the reasons that some Australians fear immigration by people who do not share their values. Our values are usually experienced and expressed as our interests, especially when we want those in government to respect and protect our interests. Australians claim to have interests that require protection or promotion because they have certain values, which include orientations to the appropriate role of governments. That is, we think that we need certain things from those in positions of power because we feel that our interests can only be served when governments support, promote and even provide for those personal and social characteristics, activities, goals and even ways of life that we think are valuable.

Introductory reading Donald Horne, An Australian Compact? What Are the Core Values that All Australians Might Respect ?, Sydney: New South Wales Centenary of Federation Committee, 2002.

203

Voting Further reading Ian Holland and Jenny Fleming (eds), Government Reformed: Values and New Political Institutions, Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2003. Shaun Wilson, Gabrielle Meagher, Rachel Gibson, David Denemark and Mark Western (eds), Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005.

Voting

(vote, voted, voter, voters, votes) Voting is a method of decision-making in which individual choices are registered and then added together to produce a result. Who can vote, how they cast a vote, how the votes are added and how a result is determined are all governed by particular rules that vary from place to place. Voting occurs in a range of Australian political contexts, including party meetings, parliaments, constitutional referendums and general elections in which voters choose parliamentary representatives. In the last context, the electorate as a whole expresses its preferences after campaigning by, and debates between, candidates for parliamentary office. Voting in this context is an individual’s act of support or preference for a particular candidate, or a particular group of candidates. To protect voters’ privacy and anonymity, voting is conducted via a secret ballot. Voting generally takes place at a designated polling booth on the day of an election. In the majority of democratic countries, voting is voluntary; however some countries, such as Australia, Belgium and Brazil, have compulsory voting systems. Australia has had compulsory voting in Commonwealth elections since 1924. In elections, Australians vote for representatives, usually from political parties. When elections are held for the House of Representatives, Australians choose a local member to represent their local area, or electorate, in parliament. There are 150 House of Representatives electorates around the country, and they are intended to be roughly equal in the number of voters that they contain (currently around 80,000). There are a variety of electoral systems. Two main ways of voting are first past the post and preferential voting. In the first past the post

204

Voting method, voters mark their single preferred candidate. Whoever gets the most votes is elected, regardless of whether they obtain an overall majority of the votes. First past the post is not used in Australia but is used in some elections in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. In the preferential method of voting, voters must rank the candidates in the order of their preference. The preferential voting method for electing representatives has at its core the idea that the winner needs to have gained the majority of votes. Counting votes is influenced by two main principles: majoritarianism or proportionality. Elections for the House of Representatives are underpinned by the ideas of majoritarianism, in that the winner of a seat needs to have gained the majority of the votes. The contest for seats is often therefore between the two major parties, since candidates from one or other of those parties usually achieve, or get closest to achieving, a majority of votes. Where necessary, votes for minor parties and independents are re-distributed between the major parties according to the preferences indicated by their supporters. Elections for the Australian Senate use proportional representation to determine who is elected from the votes cast. Proportional representation is used when there are multiple representatives being elected in each electorate. In the case of the Senate, the electorate is each state and territory. Voters in each state and territory have a different candidate list to choose from. To be elected, candidates have to achieve a quota, or a pre-determined proportion of all votes cast. For example, in regular elections for the Senate (often also called ‘half-Senate’ elections because only half the Senators are elected), six Senators will be elected from each state and the quota needed for election is about 14.3 per cent of all votes cast. The ways of voting and counting votes vary between federal, state and local government systems in Australia. While elections are a highly specialised and technical process for selecting representatives, for individuals the act of voting is not. Most Australians already know who they will vote for before they enter the polling booth, because they have a psychological affinity with a particular political party. This affinity is referred to as party identification. Some commentators argue that long-term party identification is the main reason for electoral stability in Australia. This predictability in the electorate

205

Voting has changed over the last twenty years, with more voters prepared to vote for or identify with minor parties, and an increasing number of voters not identifying with any party at all. A large proportion of Australians vote for the major parties for a range of reasons associated with their political socialisation. The parties people vote for are often linked to their socio-economic characteristics, such as class, socio-economic status, age, sex, ethnicity and education level. Ideas of class and socio-economic status have been particularly important in interpreting why Australians vote for particular parties. However, not everyone’s vote can be explained by these characteristics. Some people choose to ‘swing’ between major parties, some vote strategically against major parties, and some vote according to the political issues, candidates and leaders of the day.

Introductory reading Rodney Smith, ‘Party’, Chapter 3 in Australian Political Culture, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2001, pp. 46–71.

Further reading Graeme Orr, Australian Electoral Systems: How well do they serve political equality?, Canberra: Democratic Audit of Australia, Australian National University, 2004. John Warhurst and Marian Simms (eds), 2001: The Centenary Election, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2002.

206

Wedge politics

Ww Wedge politics Wedge politics is a term that emerged in American politics in the mid1980s and entered public commentary on Australian politics from the late 1990s. It is sometimes used loosely to describe any policies or statements that set the interests of one group of Australians against another group, rather than uniting them. More specifically, wedge politics usually refers to an electoral strategy. This strategy involves a party emphasising a policy or idea that its own supporters will mostly find palatable or inoffensive but that will deeply divide supporters of an opposing party. The idea or policy will typically draw on a negative stereotype about a group of people. The party adopting wedge politics hopes to keep its own support intact but drive a wedge into its opponent’s camp, making it hard for the opposing party to react either for or against the policy or idea without losing some of its supporters or at least weakening their commitment. Those who use the term wedge politics usually see it as an illegitimate tactic, one to which only other parties would stoop. This is partly because wedge politics is associated with appeals to base fears around issues like welfare, race and security. In the 2001 election, for example, John Howard and the Coalition parties were accused of wedge politics when they deliberately made Middle Eastern and Asian asylum seekers coming to Australia on boats a central campaign issue. Labor’s uncertain response on the issue almost certainly lost it votes to the Coalition from supporters fearful of border security threats and to the Greens among supporters disappointed with Labor’s timidity in the face of apparently racist appeals. Political parties have always tried to take votes from their opponents. The Coalition parties used the fear of communism

207

Welfare effectively to drive a wedge into Labor’s supporters during the Cold War, for example, while Labor used quality of life, social rights and environmental issues to do the same to the Coalition’s middle class support from the 1970s. Arguably the difference between these earlier instances and contemporary accusations of wedge politics lies in the suspicion that the major parties are now electoral–professional machines that no longer really stand for opposed ideologies or values and so adopt wedge politics in a cynical way simply to help defeat their opponents.

Introductory reading Sally Young, ‘Hitting the Target’, Chapter 10 in The Persuaders: Inside the Hidden Machine of Political Advertising, Melbourne: Pluto Press, 2004, pp. 213–30.

Further reading Ian Ward, ‘The Tampa, Wedge Politics, and a Lesson for Political Journalism’, Australian Journalism Review, 24 (2002), pp. 21–39. Shaun Wilson and Nick Turnbull, ‘Wedge Politics and Welfare Reform in Australia’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 47 (2001), pp. 384–402.

Welfare In social policy, welfare refers to the range of services intended to meet people’s needs. This is the use of the term in the idea of the welfare state. In general, welfare states provide support to individuals and families who are not in the labour market or who are living in poverty. This includes the unemployed, the aged, people with disabilities and sole parents. There is a core group of specific national programs that form the welfare state. These programs are income support for those in poverty, support and care for the aged, labour market assistance, income assistance for people raising children, health care and housing assistance. Welfare exists to reduce poverty and inequality in society (see equality); and provide a collective safety net for people during times of need. The offer of welfare also acknowledges that people need different assistance at different

208

Welfare stages of their lives; for example, when they are out of the labour force, become old, or raise children. The size of the welfare state in particular countries is linked to the ability of governments to raise taxes to pay for services and benefits. Two types of transfer programs are at the base of the welfare state: those of a social security nature and those that are social assistance. Social security generally refers to income support and benefits that are delivered on an entitlement basis; and social assistance refers to programs established to help those in particular need. Political debates over welfare cover two main areas. The first covers how much tax revenue governments should raise from the general population to provide welfare. The second concerns how much welfare through income support and services (sometimes known as social expenditure) should be provided by governments. Social expenditure covers cash transfer payments from the government such as unemployment benefits. Social expenditure in Australia as a proportion of overall gross domestic product is well below the average of liberal democracies (see also democracy). Most Australian government spending is focussed on poverty alleviation. Australia also spends significantly less money on social security payments than any other country. This suggests that not all welfare states are the same. Many of the continental European, and predominantly the Scandinavian, countries have extensive welfare states supported by high levels of taxation. At the other end is the United States, which has a much smaller welfare state and lower levels of taxation. The second debate about how much welfare should be provided also concerns who is entitled to welfare support from the government and increasingly focusses on citizenship responsibilities (see also citizenship). In Australia, and in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, services and welfare are deliberately targeted to the needy, rather than being underpinned by universal service provision principles, as is the case in Scandinavian countries. Increasingly, the Australian middle class is being encouraged to not rely on government services and to utilise private schemes that are said to deliver a higher quality of service. The Australian welfare state is different from those in the United Kingdom and the United States of America in two related ways. First, Australia has been seen as a distinctive ‘wage-earners’ welfare

209

Westminster state because of the Australian focus on a living wage regulated by industrial courts. Second, high wages and low taxes have allowed many Australians to save for retirement by investing in a family home. Australians have much higher rates of home ownership than many other countries with more generous social expenditure.

Introductory reading Alan Fenna, ‘Social Policy and the Australian Welfare State’, Chapter 12 in Australian Public Policy, second edition, Sydney: Pearson Education, 2004, pp. 318–60.

Further reading Peter Saunders, The Ends and Means of Welfare: Coping with Economic and Social Change in Australia, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Shaun Wilson, Gabrielle Meagher and Trevor Breusch, ‘Where to for the Welfare State?’, in Shaun Wilson, Gabrielle Meagher, Rachel Gibson, David Denemark and Mark Western (eds), Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005, pp. 101–21.

Westminster Westminster is one of the most common generic labels used to summarise the core features of Australia’s formal political institutions and the relationships between them. The word is used both in a descriptive sense, to suggest that the Australian political system actually operates in a particular way, and in a normative sense, as a standard against which Australian political practice is judged. The key institutions in the Westminster system of government are the public service bureaucracy, the cabinet or ministry, the parliament, the judiciary and the constitutional monarch. The central relationships between these institutions involve the people electing a parliament that represents them, which in turn elects a ministry from among its members to act as the executive or government. This executive is served by a neutral public service. The constitutional monarch (represented in Australia by governors-general and governors) is formally part of the parliament and executive

210

Westminster but rarely intervenes in their day to day politics. The judiciary is independent of the other institutions and impartially upholds the law. Westminster-style systems of government are thus characterised by parliamentary democracy and a partial separation of powers, in which the judiciary is separate from the legislature (parliament) and executive (ministry) but all the members of the executive sit within the parliament and are responsible to it. The Westminster system is sometimes described as one of representative and responsible government. The term Westminster comes from the name of the meeting place of parliaments in London since the thirteenth century. Features of the British Westminster system developed over time. Such change was aided by the fact that much Westminster political practice was guided by unwritten conventions and governments could alter the written parts of the British constitution simply by passing laws through parliament. Versions of the Westminster system were exported to parts of the British Empire, including the Australian colonies, where they were more or less extensively adapted to meet local political circumstances. Australia, for example, less closely resembles the British Westminster model than its neighbour New Zealand. One important Australian adaptation of Westminster, which began in the nineteenth-century colonial period, limited the sovereignty or power of parliaments by establishing written constitutions that the parliaments could not amend by themselves. Actions of parliaments and executives could be challenged in the courts, which might judge them to be invalid against the constitution. Another important modification from 1901 was the Australian adoption of an American-style federalism that entrenched a distribution of powers between the states and the Commonwealth. This move restricted the Australian Commonwealth parliament’s powers in a way alien to British Westminster practice. Modifications like these, as well as developments in British politics, have left clear differences as well as similarities between Australian political practice and that of Britain. Political scientists often argue that the differences are so great as to make the Westminster label

211

Westminster misleading in Australia’s case, but there is little agreement among them about what alternative label ought to be applied to Australia’s overall institutional pattern of politics.

Introductory reading Ariadne Vromen and Katharine Gelber, ‘Frameworks for Governing’, Chapter 3 in Powerscape: Contemporary Australian Political Practice, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005, pp. 53–83.

Further reading David Hamer, Can Responsible Government Survive in Australia?, Canberra: University of Canberra, 1994. Campbell Sharman, ‘Australia as a Compound Republic’, Politics 25 (1990), pp. 1–5.

212

Index

Note: keywords are indicated by bold text. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, 85 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, see Indigenous Australians accords (government–union), 198 accountability, 3–5, 111 advocacy, 5–7, 88–9 affirmative action, 7–8 agenda setting, 9–10 aid, 13 anarchism, 151 anti-discrimination, 7–8, 58, 149 ANZUS Security Treaty, 168, 195 Asian values, 202 aspiration, 10–12 asylum seeker(s), 12–14, 168, 207 The Australia Institute, 187 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 146 Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 18–19 Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, 198 Australian Council of Social Services, 6 Australian Council of Trade Unions, 197 Australian Democrats, 130, 131 Australian Greens, 57, 130, 179 Australian Labor Party, 11 internal organisation, 113–14, 131, 153 political philosophy, 130, 177, 182, 191 relations with other groups, 19, 177, 197 Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 188 Bentham, Jeremy, 199–200 Bill of Rights, 163

Blair, Tony, 184 bureaucracy, 4, 15–17 business, 17–19 Business Council of Australia, 18, 88 Cabinet (Commonwealth Government), 26, 113 Centre for Independent Studies, 187 charisma, 100 citizenship, 20–1, 84, 209 civil rights, 20, 167 class, 22–3, 52, 53 Clubs NSW, 141 coalition governments, 129 collective bargaining, 197 collectivism, 202 colonialism, 23–5 committee, 25–7 community, 27–8, 86 community sector, 28, 188–9 compulsory voting, 204 conflict, ix conservatism, 29–30, 193 constitution, 30–2, 211 Constitution of Australia, 31, 166 crisis, 1975, 33, 36–7, 126, 157 judicial interpretation, 94, 95 provisions, 67, 90, 191, 195 constitutional monarchy, 157 constructivism (in international affairs), 91 contracting out, 51 convention, 32–4 corporatisation, 51 corruption, 4, 16, 34–5, 60

213

214

Index

Cox, Eva, 176 crisis, 36–7 Critical Mass (protest action), 142 culture, 37–9, 53 culture wars, 39–41, 139, 149

Fraser government, 115 free trade, 190 Free Trade Agreement (Australia–US), 191 freedom, 71–3 freedom of information laws, 4

decolonisation, 24, 169 deconstruction, 48 deliberation, 43 deliberative democracy, 42–3, 45 democracy, xii, xiii, 44–5 Derrida, Jacques, 48, 139 difference, 45–7 direct action, 141 disabilities, 46, 80 discourse, 47–9

gay and lesbian rights movement, 174 gender, 46, 74–6 generational difference, 47 globalisation, 19, 49, 76–8, 178 Governor-General, 63, 157 green, 78–9 Greenpeace, 78, 141

East Timor, 170 eco-feminism, 79 ecologism, 78–9 economic rationalism, 49, 50–2, see also neo-liberalism eco-socialism, 79 education, 11, 143, 178 egalitarianism, 52–3, 57–9 electoral systems, 204–5 elite(s), 53–5, 135–6 environmentalism, 55–7, 78, 150 as social movement, 78, 179 equal employment opportunity (EEO), 7–8 Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999, 69 equal pay, 69 equality, 52–3, 57–9 ethics, 35, 59–60 ethnicity, 46, 61–2, 148 Evatt Foundation, 187 executive (government), 63–4 Executive Council, 63 external affairs power, see Constitution of Australia factions (in parties), 131, 152 family, 65–6, 74, 193 Family First (party), 154 federalism, 31, 67–8, 95, 97 feminism, 69–71, 74 radical, 70, 151 Foucault, Michel, 47–8, 139

Hanson, Pauline, 136, 148 Hawke–Keating government, 113, 178 policies, 40, 115, 191 High Court of Australia, 94, 173 Higher Education Contribution Scheme, 178 history wars, see culture wars Hobbes, Thomas, 167 Hobsbawm, Eric, 192 House of Representatives, 126 Howard, John, 161, 167 political philosophy, 66, 107, 154, 207 Howard government, 41, 114, 115, 191 Howard’s battlers, 11 human rights, 200 social movement, 90 identity politics, 80–1 ideology, 81–3 immigration policy, 12–13, 115 Immigration Restriction Act, 132 imperialism, 24 independents (in parliament), 130 indigenous, 83–5 Indigenous Australians, 41, 83–5, 149, 195, see also land rights affirmative action, 7–8 rights, 149, 163, 171 traditional law and society, 98, 153, 193 individualism, 85–7, 202 Institute of Public Affairs, 187 interest group(s), 18, 87–9 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 195

Index international law, 90 international relations, 89–92, 168–9, 194–5 internet, 92–3, 108 Islam, 151, 153, 166 judicial activism, 95 judiciary, 94–6 Kemp, David, 11 Koowarta case, 195 Kuhn, Thomas, 138 labour movement, 179 laissez-faire, 71–2 land rights, 85, 95, see also Indigenous Australians Lane, William, 181 Latham, Mark, 11 law, xii, 97–8 leadership, 98–101 Lee Kuan Yew, 202 liberal feminism, 69–70 Liberal Party of Australia, 129, 148 internal organisation, 113, 131, 153 political philosophy, 30, 130 relations with business, 19 liberalism, 50, 71–2, 86, 91, 101–4, see also utilitarianism libertarianism, 103 Lippmann, Walter, 9 lobbying, see advocacy Lowy Institute, 188 Lukes, Steven, 140 Mabo case, 85 managerialism, 105–6, 147, 160 mandate, 106–8, 156 mandatory detention, 13, 14 Mardi Gras (Sydney), 174 market rules, 18 Marxism, 22–3, 150, 181 Maslow, Abraham, 168 mass media, see media; news media maternity leave, 66 mateship, 53 media, 92, 108–10, 183, see also news media agenda setting, see agenda setting

215

Menzies government, 113 Mill, John Stuart, 200 ministerial adviser, 110–12 ministers, 16, 17 responsibility, 160, 161 ministry, 112–14 modernism, 137, 193 multiculturalism, 40, 61–2, 114–16, 149 Murdoch, Rupert, 110 mutual obligation, 121 Namatjira, Albert, 84 national culture, 38, see also national identity National Farmers Federation, 18, 88 national identity, 61, 117–19, 148, see also national culture Australia, 61, 118–19 nationalism, 135 The Nationals (party), 19, 30, 129, 130 neo-colonialism, 24–5, 192 neo-conservatism, see economic rationalism; neo-liberalism neo-liberalism, 103, 150, see also economic rationalism neo-Marxism, 91 News Corporation, 110 news media, 109–10, 184, see also media non-government sector, 188–9 non-profit sector, 188–9 obligation, 120–22 ombudsmen, 4 One Nation (party), 41, 62, 136 opinion polls, 144–5 Other (The), 45, 122–4 Packer, Kerry, 110 paradigms, 138 parliamentary democracy, 211 parliamentary responsibility, 160 parliament(s), xii, 43, 125–7, 156 bicameral, 107–8, 126 committees, 26 Commonwealth, 26 state, 26 participation (political), 92–3, 127–9, 175 participatory democracy, 45

216

Index

partisanship, 130 party (political), ix, 8, 26, 129–32, 205 Perkins, Charles, 85 Pitkin, Hanna, 155 policy, 132–4 policy advocacy, see advocacy political culture, 38–9 political discourse, 49 political parties, see party (political) political rights, 21 political socialisation, 10, 134–5, 206 political systems, x–xi politics, viii–xii populism, 135–7, 156 post-colonialism, 25 post-materialism, 168 post-modern feminism, 70 post-modernism, 40, 137–9 post-structuralism, 139 power, x, xi, 139–41 operation in Australian politics, 140 preferential voting, 205 private sector, 143 privatisation, 51 proportional representation, 130, 205 protest, 141–2 public and private, 142–4, see also private sector; public sector public opinion, 9–10, 144–6, 184 public policy, 133 public sector, 64, 143, 146–7 committees, 26 effect of economic rationalism, 18 effect of managerialism, 105 public service, 146–7 Publishing and Broadcasting Limited, 110 Putnam, Robert, 175 race, 61, 148–50 Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), 148, 195 racism, 150–2 radical, 150–2 realism (in international affairs), 91 referenda, 31, 84, 157–8 refugees, see asylum seeker(s)

relativism, 138 religion, 46, 152–4, 193 representation, 154–7 representations (in ideology), 82–3 representative democracy, 42, 43, 44–5, 54, 154 republic, 157–9 Australia, 31, 33, 157–8, 173 responsibility, 3, 159–62 responsible government, 159 Right to Life (interest group), 88 rights, 162–4 sanctions, 3 scepticism, 138 secession, 170 sectarianism, 152 secularism, 152, 163, 165–7 in Australian society, 166–7 security, 167–9 self-determination, 169–71 Indigenous Australians, 85, 171 Senate, 126, 205 separation of church and state, 166 separation of powers, 125, 172, 173, 211 Australia, 94–5, 172–3 service obligations, 121 Sex Discrimination Act 1984, 69 sexuality, 46, 174–5 Smith, Adam, 86, 102 social accommodation, 124 social capital, 175–6 social Darwinism, 149 social democracy, 176–8 social expenditure, 209 social liberalism, see welfare liberalism social movement(s), 141, 177, 178–80 feminism, 69 gay and lesbian, 174 identity politics, 80 Indigenous Australians, 85 social rights, 21 social status, 22 socialism, 19, 150, 180–3, 193 socialist feminism, 70 South Sydney Rabbitohs (National Rugby League), 141

Index Soviet Union, xi, 170, 182 spin, 183–4 sustainability (environmental), 56, 203 terrorism, 185–7 legislation against, 167, 180, 200 think tank, 187–8 third sector, 188–9, 190 ‘third way’ politics, 177 Timor Sea Treaty, 194 trade, 190–2 trade unions, see union(s) tradition, 192–4 traditional law, see Indigenous Australians traditional societies, 193 treaty, 90, 194–6, see also convention trustee-type representation, 156 two-party system, 129 unemployment benefits, 21 union(s), 87, 177, 197–9 unitary systems (of government), 67 United Nations, 90 United States, 172 Unity Party, 62 utilitarianism, 199–201, see also liberalism

217

values, 45, 202–3 shared by Australians, 202 voluntary sector, 188–9 voters, aspirational, see aspiration voting, 204–6 wealth, 22 Weber, Max, 100, 105 wedge politics, 207–8 welfare, 11, 208–10 welfare liberalism, 72, 86, 102–3, 200 welfare state, 168, 208–9 Westminster (system), x, 4, 113, 172, 210–12 White Australia Policy, 132, 149 Whitlam government, 107, 111 policies, 115, 178, 191 Wik case, 85 Williams, Raymond, xii women, 46, 65–6, 74–5, 123, 156–7, 163 affirmative action, see affirmative action feminism, see feminism Women’s Electoral Lobby, 88 work, 74 work for the dole scheme, 121 workplace laws, 168 World Trade Organisation (WTO), 191